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XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



THE ART 



OF 



HORSEMANSHIP. 



BY 
t 



XENOPHON. 



TRANSLATED, WITH CHAPTERS ON THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 
AND WITH NOTES, 

BY 

MORRIS H. MORGAN, Ph.D. 

Assistant Professor in Harvard University. 



Proficies nihil hoc, caedas licet usque, flagello. 



BOSTON: ^. 

LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY, >v*^2/.^^^t> J 
1893, 






Copyright, 1893, 
By Morris H. Morgan. 



SlttiijEtsttg ^ress: 
John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 



PREFACE. 



Among technical treatises, that of Xeno- 
phon on Horsemanship is almost unique in 
one particular. Even after more than twenty- 
three centuries it is still, in the main, a 
sound and excellent guide for so much of the 
field as.it covers. This fact, together with 
the simple and delightful manner in which 
the subject is treated, has led me to think 
that some who are not able or do not care 
to approach the book in the original Greek, 
might like to read a translation of the earli- 
est known work on the horse and how to 
ride him. To be sure, there have already- 
been versions in English ; but these seem to 
me, and have seemed to others, unsatisfactory. 

My translation is made from the Greek 
text of Dindorf's Oxford edition. Two 
well-known special editions of the treatise I 



VI PREFACE. 

have found very useful. These are by 
Courier, with notes and a translation into 
French, first published in Paris in 1813, and 
by Jacobs, with notes and a German version, 
Gotha, 1825. Hermann's essay, "De verbis 
quibus Graeci incessum equorum indicant," 
is indispensable for the study of certain parts 
of the treatise. I have also consulted the 
German translation of Ginzrot, with brief 
notes, in the second volume of his large 
work called " Die Wagen und Fuhrwerke 
der Griechen und Romer," Munich, 181 7. 
Ginzrot's book must be used with caution; 
the illustrations are often fanciful, and the 
statements need verification ; but his transla- 
tion of Xenophon is sometimes helpful. In 
English I have seen three translations, — 
Berenger's (in his "History and Art of Horse- 
manship," London, 1771, a somewhat rare 
book, for the loan of which I am obliged to 
the Librarian of the Boston Athenaeum) ; an 
anonymous translation reprinted with the 
minor works of Xenophon in Philadelphia in 
1845; and Watson's, in Bohn's Classical 
Library. The first is by far the best, but I 
have not found either of the three of much 



PREFACE. Vll 

assistance. There has been no edition of 
the Greek text with English notes. 

The illustrations in this book are all 
selected from the antique, and are repro- 
duced from the best sources at my command. 
These sources, together with a brief descrip- 
tion of each picture, are given on page 158 ff. 
I might have illustrated almost every subject 
in the treatise by means of the Parthenon 
frieze ; but I choose rather to omit all but a 
few of these well-known works, and to present 
others which are less generally known to the 
readers for whom my book is primarily in- 
tended. For it will be easy to see that I 
have not written for philologians. The brief 
essay on the Greek Riding-horse makes no 
pretence to completeness, and little to origi- 
nality. In it, and in the notes which follow, 
my chief intention has been to offer only 
what I thought would be necessary explana- 
tion or interesting information to those who 
do not profess to be classical scholars. Yet 
perhaps even such scholars may find here 
and there, especially in the notes, a few 
points which may be new, and, I hope, not 
unacceptable to them. And I sincerely wish 



VlU PREFACE. 

that this little book might lead some one to a 
more thorough study of the subjects of riding 
and driving in antiquity. They offer a fertile 
and interesting field for special investigation. 
Besides the German works already men- 
tioned, and the ordinary classical handbooks, 
the best books in which to find information 
about the Greek horse and horsemanship are 
Schlieben's " Die Pferde des Altertums," 1867, 
Martin's "Les Cavaliers Atheniens," 1886, 
and Daremberg and Saglio's '* Dictionnaire 
des Antiquit6s," under the words equiteSj 
eqims, etc. I have not seen Lehndorf's 
" Hippodromos," 1876, nor Pietrement's "Les 
chevaux dans les temps historiques et prd- 
historiques," 1883. One of the most charm- 
ing of the works of Cherbuliez is his '* Cheval 
de Phidias," 1864, in which the subject is 
considered from purely artistic and aesthetic 
points of view. Of course there is much 
information scattered through periodical liter- 
ature; but, in spite of all, the book of the 
ancient horse is yet to be written. 

M. H. M. 
May, 1893. 



CONTENTS. 



-•- 



Page 

Xenophon on Horsemanship ...... 13 

The Greek Riding-Horse 69 

Points of the Horse 107 

Notes 119 

On the Illustrations iS9 

Index 185 




XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



CHAPTER I. 



TT has been my fortune to spend a great 
^ deal of time in riding, and so I think 
myself versed in the horseman's art. This 
makes me willing to set forth to the younger 
of my friends what I believe would be the 
best way for them to deal with horses. It 
is true that a book on horsemanship has 
already been written by Simon : ' I mean 
the man who dedicated the bronze horse at the 
Eleusinion* in Athens with his own exploits 
» The numerals refer to the Notes, p. 1 19 &. 



14 XENOPHON ON HORSEiMANSHIP. 

in relief on the pedestal. Still, I shall not 
strike out of my work all the points in which 
I chance to agree with him, but shall take 
much greater pleasure in passing them on 
to my friends, believing that I speak with 
the more authority because a famous horse- 
man, such as he, has thought as I do. And 
then, again, I shall try to make clear what- 
ever he has omitted. 

To begin with, I shall describe how a 
man, in buying a horse, would be least 
likely to be cheated. In the case of an 
unbroken colt, of course his frame is what 
you must test; as for spirit, no very sure 
signs of that are offered by an animal that 
has never yet been mounted. And in his 
frame, the first things which I say you 
ought to look at are his feet.^ Just as a 
house would be good for nothing if it were 
very handsome above but lacked the proper 
foundations, so too a war-horse, even if all his 
other points were fine, would yet be good for 
nothing if he had bad feet; for he could not 
use a single one of his fine points. 

The feet should first be tested by exam- 
ining the horn; thick horn'^ is a much better 



CHAPTER I. 15 

mark of good feet than thin. Again, one 
should not fail to note whether the hoofs at 
toe and heel come up high or lie low. High 
ones keep what is called the frogs well off 
the ground, while horses with low hoofs walk 
with the hardest and softest part of the foot 
at once, like knock-kneed men. Simon says 
that their sound is a proof of good feet, and 
he is right ; for a hollow hoof resounds like a 
cymbal as it strikes the ground. 

As we have begun here, let us now proceed 
to the rest of the body. The bones above 
the hoofs and belov/ the fetlocks should not 
be very straight up and down, like the goat's ; 
for if they have no spring, they jar the rider, 
and such legs are apt to get inflamed. These 
bones should not come down very low, either, 
else the horse might get his fetlocks stripped 
of hair ^ and torn in riding over heavy ground 
or over stones. The shank bones ought to 
be stout, for they are the supporters of the 
body ; but they should not be thickly coated 
with flesh or veins : if they are, in riding over 
hard ground the veins would fill with blood 
and become varicose, the legs would swell, 
and the flesh recede. With this slackening 



l6 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

of the flesh, the back sinew ^ often gives wa}'', 
and makes the horse lame. As for the knees, 
if they are supple in bending when the colt 
walks, you may infer that his limbs will be 
supple in riding; for as time goes on, all colts 
get more and more supple at the knees. 
Supple knees are highly esteemed ; and justly, 
because they make the horse easier and less 
likely to stumble than stiff ones. Forearms ^ 
stout below the shoulders look stronger and 
comelier, as they do in man. 

The broader the chest so much the hand- . 
somer and the stronger is it, and the more 
naturally adapted to carry the legs well apart 
and without interference. The neck should 
not be thrown out from the chest like a 
boar's, but, like a cock's, should rise straight 
up to the poll and be slim at the bend, 
while the head, though bony, should have 
but a small jaw.^ The neck would then 
protect the rider, and the eye see what lies 
before the feet. A horse thus shaped could 
do the least harm, even if he were very high- 
spirited; for it is not by arching the neck 
and head, but by stretching them out, that 
horses try their powers of violence. You 



CHAPTER I. 17 

should note also whether his jaws are fine 
or hard, whether they are alike or different." 
Horses whose jaws are unlike are generally 
hard-mouthed. A prominent eye rather than 
a sunken one is a sure sign that the horse is 
wide awake ; and such a one can see farther 
too. Wide nostrils" mean freer breathing 
than close ones, and at the same time they 
make the horse look fiercer; for whenever 
a horse is provoked at another or gets excited 
during exercise, he dilates his nostrils very 
widely. 

A rather large poll" and ears somewhat 
small give the head more of the look which 
a horse should have. High withers make 
the rider's seat surer, and his grip on the 
shoulders stronger. A double back '^ is 
easier to sit upon, and better looking than 
a single one. A deep side, rather rounded 
at the belly, generally makes the horse at 
once easier to sit upon, stronger, and a better 
feeder. The broader and the shorter the 
loins, with so much the greater ease does 
the horse raise his forehand and bring up the 
hind-quarters to follow; then, too, the belly 
looks smallest, which, when it is large, is not 



1 8 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

only disfiguring, but makes the horse weaker 
and more unwieldy. The quarters should be 
broad and full in proportion to the sides and 
chest; and all these parts, if firm, would be 
lighter for running, and make your horse a 
great deal faster. If he has his buttocks well 
apart under the tail with the line between 
them broad, he will be sure to spread well 
behind ; in so doing he will have a stronger 
and a prouder look, both when gathering 
himself in ^^ and in riding, and all his points 
will be improved. You may take the case 
of men to prove this ; whenever they wish to 
lift anything from the ground, they do it with 
their legs apart rather than close together. 
The horse should certainly not have large 
stones ; but this point cannot be determined 
in the colt. As for the hocks below, or the 
shanks and the fetlocks and hoofs, I say 
about them here just what I did in the case 
of the forefeet 

I will set down, too, how you are least likely 
to miss the mark in the matter of size. That 
colt always turns out the largest whose 
shanks are longest at the time of foaling. For 
the shanks do not grow 's very much in any 



CHAPTER I. 19 

quadrupeds as time goes on, but the rest of 
the frame grows so as to correspond to the 
shanks. It seems to me that, by testing a 
colt's shape in the manner described, people 
would get, as a general rule, an animal with 
sound feet, strong, good-conditioned, grace- 
ful, and large. Even though some alter as 
they grow, we should still apply these tests 
with confidence, since there are a great many 
more ugly colts that turn out handsome than 
handsome ones that turn out ugly. 





CHAPTER II. 



T T does not seem necessary for me to 
-■- describe the method of breaking a colt, 
because those who are enlisted in the cavalry '^ 
in our states are persons of very considerable 
means, and take no small part in the govern- 
ment. It is also a great deal better than 
being a horse-breaker for a young man to see 
that his own condition and that of his horse 
is good, or if he knows this already, to keep 
up his practice in riding ; while an old man 
had better attend to his family and friends, to 
pubHc business and military matters, than 
be spending his time in horse-breaking. 



CHAPTER II. 21 

The man, then, that feels as I do about horse- 
breaking will, of course, put out his colt. He 
should not put him out, however, without 
having a written contract made, stating what 
the horse is to be taught before he is returned, 
just as he does when he puts his son out to 
learn a trade. This will serve as a reminder 
to the horse-breaker of what he must attend 
to, if he is to get his fee. 

See to it that the colt be kind, used to the 
hand, and fond of men when he is put out to 
the horse-breaker. He is generally made so 
at home and by the groom, if the man knows 
how to manage so that solitude means to the 
colt hunger and thirst and teasing horseflies, 
while food, drink, and relief from pain come 
from man. For if this be done, colts must 
not only love men, but even long for them. 
Then, too, the horse should be stroked in the 
places which he most likes to have handled ; 
that is, where the hair is thickest, and where 
he is least able to help himself if anything 
hurts him. The groom should also be 
directed to lead him through crowds, and to 
make him familiar with all sorts of sights and 
all sorts of noises. Whenever the colt is 



22 



XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



frightened at any of them, he should be 
taught, not by irritating but by soothing 
him, that there is nothing to fear. It seems 
to me that this is enough to tell the amateur 
to do in the matter of horse-breaking. 





CHAPTER III. 



I SHALL now set down some memoranda 
to be observed in buying a horse 
already broken, to riding, if you are not to be 
cheated in the purchase. First, then, the 
question of age should not pass unnoticed ; 
for if he no longer has the markers/^ the 
prospect is not a glad one, and he is not to 
be disposed of so easily. His youth once 
made sure of, the way in which he lets you 
put the bit into his mouth, and the head-piece 
about his ears, should not escape you. This 
would be least likely to pass unnoticed if the 
bridle were put on and taken off in the sight 



24 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

of the purchaser. Next we ought to observe 
how he receives the rider upon his back ; a 
good many horses hardly let come near them 
things whose very approach is a sign that 
there is work to be done. This, too, must 
be observed, — whether, when mounted, he 
is willing to leave other horses, or whether, 
when ridden near horses that are standing 
still, he runs away towards them. Some 
horses, also, from bad training take flight 
towards home from the riding-grounds. The 
exercise called the Volte '^ shows up a hard 
mouth, and even more the practice of chang- 
ing the direction. Many horses do not try 
to run away unless the mouth is hard on the 
same side with the road for a bolt towards 
home.'9 Then you must know whether, 
when let out at full speed, he will come 
to the poise and be willing to turn round. 
It is not a bad thing to try whether he is 
just as ready to mind when roused by a blow 
as he was before. A disobedient servant is 
of course a useless thing, and so is a dis- 
obedient army; a disobedient horse is not 
only useless, but he often plays the part of a 
very traitor. 



CHAPTER III. 25 

As I assume that the horse to be bought is 
meant for war, trial should be made of all the 
qualities that war itself puts to the test. These 
are jumping ditches, going over walls, breast- 
ing banks, and leaping down from them ; you 
must try him riding up hill and down dale 
and along the slope. All these tests prove 
whether his spirit is strong and his body 
sound. He should not be rejected, however, 
if he does not perform them all very finely ; 
as many animals fail, not from inability but 
from want of practice in these feats. With 
instruction, habit, and practice they may do 
all finely, provided they are sound and not 
vicious. But you must beware of horses that 
are naturally shy. The over-timid let no 
harm come to the enemy from off their backs, 
and they often throw the rider and bring 
him into the greatest danger. 

Yea must learn, too, whether the horse 
has any particular vice, shown towards other 
horses or towards men, and whether he is 
very skittish. These are all troublesome 
matters for his owner. You could much 
better discover objections to being bridled 
and mounted and other vices, by trying to 



26 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

do over again, after the horse has finished 
his work, just what you did before beginning 
your ride. Horses that are ready to submit 
to a task the second time, after having done 
it once, give proof enough of high spirit. 
To sum it all up, the least troublesome and 
the most serviceable to his rider in the wars 
would naturally be the horse that is sound- 
footed, gentle, sufficiently fleet, ready and 
able to undergo fatigue, and, first and fore- 
most, obedient On the other hand, horses 
that need much urging from laziness or much 
coaxing and attention from being too mettle- 
some, keep the rider's hands always engaged, 
and take away his courage in moments of 
danger. 





CHAPTER IV. 



"\T 7HEN one has bought a horse that he 
' ^ really admires, and has taken him 
home, it is a good thing to have his stall *° in 
such a part of the establishment that his 
master shall very often have an eye " on the 
animal; it is well, too, that the stable should 
be so arranged that the horse's food can no 
more be stolen out of the manger than his 
master's out of the storeroom. In my opin- 
ion, the man who neglects this matter is 
neglecting himself; for it is plain that in 
moments of danger the master gives his own 
life into the keeping of his horse. A secure 
stable is a good thing, not only to prevent 



28 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the stealing of grain, but also because you 
can easily tell when the horse refuses his 
feed. Observing this, you may know either 
that there is too nnuch blood in him, or that 
he has been overworked and wants rest, or 
that barley surfeit" or some other disease is 
coming on. In the horse, as in the man, all 
diseases are easier to cure at the start than 
after they have become chronic and have 
been wrongly diagnosed. 

The same care which is given to the 
horse's food and exercise, to make his body 
grow strong, should also be devoted to keep- 
ing his feet in condition. Even naturally 
sound hoofs get spoiled in stalls with moist, 
smooth floors. The floors should be slop- 
ing, to avoid moisture, and, to prevent 
smoothness, stones *3 should be sunk close to 
one another, each about the size of the 
hoofs. The mere standing on such floors 
strengthens the feet. Further, -of course, the 
groom should lead the horse out somewhere 
to rub him down, and should loose him 
from the manger after breakfast, so that he 
may go to dinner the more readily. This 
place outside of the stall would be best suited 



CHAPTER IV. 29 

to the purpose of strengthening the horse's 
feet if you threw down loosely four or five 
cartloads of round stones, each big enough to 
fill your hand and about a pound and a half 
in weight, surrounding the whole with an 
iron border to keep them from getting scat- 
tered. Standing on these would be as good 
for him as travelling a ston}'- road for some 
part of every day; and whether he is being 
rubbed down or is teased by horseflies, he 
has to use his hoofs exactly as he does in 
walking. Stones strewn about in this way 
strengthen the frogs too. As for his mouth, 
you must take as much care to make it soft 
as you take to make his hoofs hard ; and the 
same treatment softens a horse's mouth that 
softens a man's flesh.** 





CHAPTER V. 



IT is also a horseman's duty, I think, to 
see that his groom is taught the proper 
way to treat the horse. First of all, he 
ought to know that he should never make 
the knot in the halter at the place where the 
head-piece fits round. The horse often rubs 
his head against the manger, and it may 
make sores if the halter is not easy about 
the ears ; and of course when there are sores, 
then the horse must be somewhat fretful 
in bridling and grooming. It is well that 
the groom should have orders to carry out 



CHAPTER V. 31 

the droppings and the litter every day to 
a given place ; by doing so he may get rid of 
it in the easiest way for himself, and would be 
doing the horse good too. The groom must 
understand that he is to put the muzzle ^^ 
on the horse when he leads him out to be 
rubbed down or to the place where he rolls ; ^^ 
in fact, the horse ought always to be muzzled 
whenever he is taken anywhere without a 
bridle. The muzzle, without hindering his 
breathing, allows no biting, and when it is 
on, it serves to keep horses from mischievous 
designs. The horse should by all means be 
fastened from above his head; for instinct 
makes him toss his head up when an>i:hing 
is worrying him about his face, and if he is 
fastened in this way, the tossing slackens the 
halter instead of pulling it taut 

In grooming, begin with the head and 
mane ; if the upper parts are not clean, it is 
waste labour to clean the lower parts. Next 
raise the hair on the rest of the body by the 
use of all the ordinary cleaning implements,^^ 
and then clear away the dust by working 
with the grain of the hair; but the hair on 
the backbone should never be touched by 



32 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

any implement at all. It is to be rubbed 
with the hand, and softly smoothed in its 
natural direction ; for thus the seat would be 
least injured. The head, however, must be 
washed with water ; ^^ it is bony, and to clean 
it with iron or wood would hurt the horse. 
The forelock also should be wetted ; this hair, 
even though pretty long, does not prevent 
the horse from seeing, but clears away from 
his eyes things that would hurt them. The 
go(ia» we must believe, gave this tuft to the 
horse instead of the huge ears which they gave 
to asses and mules to protect their eyes. 

The tail and mane should be washed, seeing 
that the hair must be made to grow on the 
tail, so that the horse, reaching out as far as 
possible, may switch away things that tor- 
ment him, and made to grow on the neck 
to afford plenty to take hold of in mounting. 
The mane, forelock, and tail are gifts of the 
gods bestowed on the horse for beauty.^^ 
A proof is that brood mares, as long as 
their hair is flowing, are not so apt to admit 
asses, whence all breeders of mules cut off 
the hair 3° from their mares preparatory to 
covering. 



CHAPTER V. 



33 



Washing down of the legs is a thing I abso- 
lutely forbid ; it does no good, — on the 
contrary, daily washing is bad for the hoofs. 
And washing under the belly should be done 
very sparingly; it worries the horse more 
than washing anywhere else, and the cleaner 
these parts are made, the more they attract 
things under the belly that would torment it. 
And no matter what pains one has spent on 
it, the horse is no sooner led out than it gets 
exactly as dirty as before. These parts, then, 
should be let alone ; and as for the legs, rub- 
bing with the mere hand is quite enough. 








i i / 1 




CHAPTER VL 



NEXT I shall explain how a man may 
groom a horse with the least danger 
to himself and the greatest good to the 
animal. If he tries to clean him facing with 
the horse, he runs the risk of a blow in the 
face from knee or hoof; but if he faces just 
the other way and outside the reach of the leg, 
when he cleans him, and takes his place off 
the shoulder-blade in rubbing him down, he 
will not be harmed at all, and may even 
bend back the hoof and attend to the horse's 
frog. Let him clean the hind legs in the 
same way. The man that takes care of the 
horse should know that both in this matter 
and in everything else which has to be done, 
the very last places at which he should 
approach to do it are in front and behind; 



CHAPTER VI. 35 

for if the horse means mischief, these are the 
two points at which he has the advantage 
of a man. But by approaching him at the 
side you can handle him most freely and 
with the least danger to yourself. 

When a horse is to be led, I certainly do 
not approve of leading him behind you ; for 
then you have the least chance to look out 
for yourself, and the horse has the best chance 
to do whatever he likes. Then again I object 
to teaching the horse to go on ahead with a 
long leading-rein. The reason is that the 
horse can then do mischief on either side he 
pleases, and can even whirl round and face 
his leader. Why, only think of several 
horses led together in this fashion, — how in 
the world could they be kept away from one 
another? But a horse that is accustomed to 
be led by the side can do the least mischief 
to other horses and to men, and would be 
most convenient and ready for the rider, 
especially if he should ever have to mount 
in a hurry. 

In order to put the bridle on properly, the 
groom should first come up on the near 3' side 
of the horse ; then, throwing the reins over 



36 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the head and letting them drop on the 
withers, he should take the head-piece ^^ in 
his right hand and offer the bit with his left. 
If the horse receives it, of course the head- 
stall 33 is to be put on; but if he does not 
open his mouth, the bit should be held 
against his teeth and the thumb of the left 
hand thrust within his jaw. This makes most 
horses open the mouth. If he does not 
receive the bit even then, press his lip hard 
against the tush ; very few horses refuse it on 
feeling this. 

Let your groom be well instructed in the 
following points: first, never to lead the 
horse by one rein,^^ for this makes one side of 
the mouth harder than the other; secondly, 
what is the proper distance of the bit from 
the corners of the mouth: if too close, it 
makes the mouth callous, so that it has no 
delicacy of feeling; but if the bit hangs too 
low down in the mouth, the horse can take it 
in his teeth and so refuse to mind it. 

The following must also be urged strongly 
upon the groom if any work at all is to be 
done. Willingness to receive the bit is 
such an important point that a horse which 



CHAPTER VI. 37 

refuses it is utterly useless. Now, if the 
bridle is put on not only when he is going 
to be worked, but also when he is led to his 
food and home after exercise, it would not be . 
at all strange if he should seize the bit of his 
own accord when you hold it out to him. It 
is well for the groom to understand how to put 
a rider up Persian fashion,3s so that his master, 
if he gets infirm or has grown oldish, may 
himself have somebody to mount him hand- 
ily or may be able to oblige anotlier with a 
person to mount him. 

The one great precept and practice in 
using a horse is this, — never deal with him 
when you are in a fit of passion. A fit of 
passion is a thing that has no foresight in it, 
and so we often have to rue the day when we 
gave way to it. Consequently, when your 
horse shies at an object and is unwilling to 
go up to it, he should be shown that there is 
nothing fearful in it, least of all to a coura- 
geous horse like him ; 3^ but if this fails, touch 
the object yourself that seems so dreadful to 
him, and lead him up to it with gentleness. 
Compulsion and blows inspire only the more 
fear ; for when horses are at all hurt at such 



38 



XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



a time, they think that what they shied at is 
the cause of the hurt. 

I do not find fault with a horse for knowing 
how to settle down ^7 so as to be mounted 
easily, when the groom delivers him to 
the rider; still, I think that the true horse- 
man ought to practise and be able to mount 
even if the horse does not so offer himself. 
Different horses fall to one's lot at different 
times, and the same horse serves you one 
way at one time and another at another. 





CHAPTER VII. 



I SHALL next set down the method of 
riding which the horseman may find 
best for himself and his horse, when once he 
has received him for mounting. First, then, 
with the left hand he must take up lightly 
the halter^s which hangs from the chin-strap ^^ 
or the noseband, holding it so slack as not to 
check the horse, whether he intends to raise 
himself by laying hold of the mane about 
the ears,^ and to mount in that way, or 
whether he vaults on from his spear.-*' With 
the right hand, he must then take the reins 



40 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

at the withers and also grasp the mane, so 
that he may not wrench the horse's mouth at 
all as he gets up. In springing to his place, 
he must draw up the body with the left hand, 
keeping his right stiff as he raises himself 
with it; for in mounting thus, he will not 
look ungraceful even from behind. The leg 
should be kept bent, the knee must not 
touch the horse's back, and the calf must 
be brought clean over to the off side. After 
having brought his foot completely round, he 
is then to settle down in his seat on the 
horse. I think it good that the horseman 
should practise springing up from the off 
side as well, on the chance that he may 
happen to be leading his horse with the left 
hand and holding his spear in his right. He 
has only to learn to do with the left what 
he did before with the right, and with the 
right what he did with the left. Another 
reason why I approve of the latter method 
of mounting is that the moment he is on 
horseback the rider would be completely 
ready, if he should have to engage the enemy 
all of a sudden. 

When the rider takes his seat, whether 



CHAPTER VII. 41 

bareback or on the cloth,^ I do not approve 
of a seat which is as though the man were 
on a chair, but rather as though he were 
standing upright with his legs apart. Thus 
he would get a better grip with his thighs 
on the horse, and, being upright, he could 
hurl his javelin more vigorously and strike 
a better blow from on horseback, if need 
be. His foot and leg from the knee down 
should hang loosely, for if he keeps his leg 
stiff and should strike it against something, 
he might get it broken; but a supple leg 
would yield, if it struck against anything, 
without at all disturbing the thigh. Then, 
too, the rider should accustom himself to 
keep his body above the hips as supple as 
possible; for this would give him greater 
power of action, and he would be less liable 
to a fall if somebody should try to pull or 
push him off. The horse should be taught 
to stand still when the rider is taking his seat, 
and until he has drawn his skirts from under 
him, if necessary, made the reins even, and 
taken the most convenient grasp of his spear. 
Let him then keep his left arm at his side ; 
this will eive the rider the tidiest look, and to 



42 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

his hand the greatest power. As for reins, I 
recommend such as are alike, not weak nor 
slippery and not thick either, so that if 
necessary the hand may hold the spear as 
well. 

When the horse gets the signal to start, let 
him begin at a walk, for this frets him least. 
If the horse carries his head low, hold the 
reins with the hands a bit high ; if he carries 
it somewhat high, then rather low: this 
would make the most graceful appearance. 
Next, by taking the true trot the horse would 
relax his body with the least discomfort, and 
come with the greatest ease into the hand 
gallop. And as leading with the left is the 
more approved way, this lead would best be 
reached if the signal to gallop should be 
given the horse at the moment when he is 
rising with his right in the trot; for, being 
about to raise his left foot next, he would 
lead with it and would begin the stride as he 
comes over to the left, — for the horse in- 
stinctively leads with the right on turning 
to the right, and with the left on turning to 
the left.« 

I recommend the exercise known as the 



CHAPTER VII. 43 

Volte, because it accustoms the horse to turn 
on either jaw. Changing the direction is also 
a good thing, that the jaws on either side 
may be equally suppled. But I recommend 
the Career with sharp turns at each end 
rather than the complete Volte; for the 
horse would like turning better after he has 
had enough of the straight course, and thus 
would be practising straight-away running 
and turning at the same time. He must 
be collected at the turns, because it is not 
easy or safe for the horse to make short 
turns when he is at full speed, especially if 
the ground is uneven or slippery. When 
the rider collects him, he must not throw the 
horse aslant at all with the bit, nor sit at all 
aslant himself; else he must be well aware, 
that a slight matter will be enough to bring 
himself and his horse to the ground. The 
moment the horse faces the stretch after 
finishing the turn, the rider should push him 
on to go faster. In war, of course, turns are 
executed for the purpose of pursuing or 
retreating; hence it is well that he should 
be trained to speed after turning. 

After the horse appears to have had enough 



44 



XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



exercise, it is well to give him a rest and then 
to urge him suddenly to the top of his speed, 
either away from other horses or towards 
them; then to quiet him down out of his 
speed by pulling him up very short, and 
again, after a halt, to turn him and push him 
on. It is very certain that there will come 
times when each of these manoeuvres will be 
necessary. When the moment comes to dis- 
mount, never do so among other horses, nor 
in a crowd of bystanders, nor outside of the 
riding-ground; but let the horse enjoy a 
season of rest in the very place where he is 
obliged to work. 





CHAPTER VIII. 



THERE are many occasions, of course, 
when the horse will have to run down 
hill and up hill and along a slope, as well as 
to take a leap across or out of something and 
to jump down. So all these movements must 
be learned and practised by both horse and 
rider. The two will thus become obviously 
the more helpful and useful to one another. 
If it is thought that I am repeating myself 
because I am speaking now of what I have 
spoken before, let me say that there is no 
repetition here. I did lay down that you 
should try whether the horse could do all 
this at the time you bought him; but what 
I am now urging is that a man should teach 



46 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

his own horse, and I shall describe the right 
method of instruction. 

With a horse that has no experience what- 
ever in leaping, take him with the leading 
rein loose and leap across the ditch before 
him; then draw the rein tight to make him 
jump over. If he refuses, let somebody with 
a whip or stick lay it on pretty hard ; he will 
then jump over not merely the proper dis- 
tance but a great deal more than is required. 
He will never need a blow after that, but will 
jump the minute he sees anybody coming up 
behind him. When he is used to taking a 
leap in this way, let the rider mount and put 
him first at small and then at larger ditches, 
pricking him with the spur^ just as he is 
about to leap. Prick him with the spur in 
the same way in teaching him to leap up 
and to leap down. If the horse uses his 
whole body at once for all these, it will be 
much safer for him and for his rider than if 
his quarters are not well gathered in as he 
leaps or jumps up or down. 

Going down hill must be taught him at 
first on soft ground, and finally, when he gets 
used to it, he will Hke to run down much 



CHAPTER VIII. 47 

more than to run up. As for the fears that 
some folks feel of dislocating the horse's 
shoulders in riding down hill, they should 
take courage from the knowledge that the 
horses of the Persians and OdrysianSj^s all of 
whom habitually run their races down hill, 
are not a bit less sound than Greek horses. 

I shall not omit to tell how the rider him- 
self ought to conform to all these movements. 
When the horse bolts suddenly off, the rider 
should lean forward, for then the horse would 
be less likely to draw in under the rider and 
jolt him up; but he should bend back when 
the horse is being brought to a poise, as he 
would then be less jolted. In leaping a ditch 
or running up hill, it is not a bad thing to lay 
hold of the mane,*^ so that the horse may not 
be troubled by the bit and the ground at the 
same time. Going down a steep place, the 
rider should throw himself well back, and 
support the horse by the bit, so that rider 
and horse may not be carried headlong down 
the hill. 

It is well that the rides should be in dif- 
ferent directions occasionally, and that they 
should be sometimes long and sometimes 



48 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

short. The horse is apt to dislike '^^ this 
less than riding always in the same places 
and over the same distance. The rider 
must have a firm seat when going at full 
speed over all sorts of ground, and must also 
be able to use his weapons well on horse- 
back. Hence there is nothing to be said 
against the practice of riding in the hunt, 
where there is a suitable country with wild 
animals ; ^ but where these are not to be had, 
it is good training for two riders to arrange 
together, one to fly from the other on horse- 
back over all sorts of ground, wheeling about 
with his spear and retreating again, while the 
other pursues with buttons on his javelins 
and on his spear. Whenever he gets within 
javelin-shot, he is to hurl his button-tipped 
javelins at the runner, and to strike him with 
his spear when he overtakes him within strik- 
ing distance. If they come to close quarters, 
it is well for one to pull his adversary towards 
him and then to thrust him back all of a sud- 
den; this is the way to unhorse him. But 
the proper thing for the man who is being 
pulled to do, is to urge his horse forward; 
for by so doing, he will be more likely to 



CHAPTER VIII. 49 

unhorse the other man than to get a fall 
himself. 

And if ever there is cavalry skirmishing, 
when two armies are set in array against each 
other, and the one side pursues even to the 
enemy's main body, while the other retreats 
among its friends, it is well just here to bear 
in mind that while one is among his friends 
he is both brave and safe in wheeling among 
the first and pressing on at full speed, but 
that when he gets near the foe he should 
keep his horse well in hand ; for thus, while 
doing hurt to the enemy, he could probably 
best escape being hurt by them himself 

The gods have bestowed upon man the gift 
of teaching his brother man what he ought to 
do by word of mouth ; but it is evident that 
by word of mouth you can teach a horse 
nothing. If, however, you reward him with 
kindness after he has done as you wish, and 
punish him when he disobeys, he will be most 
likely to learn to obey as he ought. This 
rule, to be sure, may be expressed in a few 
words, but it holds good in every branch of 
the art of horsemanship. For instance, he 
would receive the bit the more readily if 

4 



so 



XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



some good should come of it every time he 
received it; and he will leap and jump up 
and obey in all the rest if he looks forward 
to a season of rest on finishing what he has 
been directed to do. 





CHAPTER IX. 



SO far, then, it has been stated how a per- 
son would be least likely to be cheated 
in buying a colt or a horse, and least likely 
to spoil him in use, but particularly how one 
could produce a horse with all the qualities 
that a rider needs in war. Now, on the 
chance that you should happen to have a 
horse that is either too high-mettled for the 
occasion or too sluggish, this is perhaps the 



$2 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

proper time to set down how to treat either 
one in the most correct fashion. In the first 

5 

place you are to know that mettle is to a 
horse what temper is to a man. Exactly, 
therefore, as a man who neither says nor does 
anything harsh would be least likely to rouse 
the temper of his neighbour, so one who 
avoids fretting a high-mettled horse would be 
the last to exasperate him. At the very out- 
set, then, in mounting, care should be taken to 
mount without annoying him. After mount- 
ing, the rider should sit quiet more than the 
ordinary time, and then move him forward 
by the most gentle signs possible. Next, 
beginning very slowly, induce him in turn to 
quicker paces in such a way that the horse 
may reach full speed almost without know- 
ing it. Every abrupt sign that you make 
him — sudden sights, sounds, or impressions 
— all disturb a high-mettled horse just as 
they do a man. [Abruptness, you must re- 
member, always confuses a horse.^^] if you 
want to collect a high-mettled horse when he 
is dashing along faster than is convenient, 
you should not draw rein abruptly, but 
should win him over gently with the bit. 



CHAPTER IX. 53 

calming him down and not forcing him to be 
still. Long stretches, rather than frequent 
turns, calm horses down, and leisurely riding 
for a good while soothes, calms down, and 
does not rouse the spirit of the horse of 
mettle. But if anybody expects to calm 
such a horse down by tiring him out with 
riding swiftly and far, his supposition is just 
the reverse of the truth; these are exactly 
the circumstances in which the high-mettled 
horse tries to carry the day by main force, 
and in his wrath, like an angry man, he often 
does much irreparable harm to himself and 
his rider. A high-mettled horse must be 
kept from dashing on at full speed, and 
utterly prevented from racing with another; 
for, as a rule, remember, the most ambitious 
horses are the highest-mettled. 

Smooth bits 5° are more suitable for such 
horses than rough ; but if a rough one is put 
in, it must be made as easy, as the smooth 
by lightness of hand. It is well also to get 
into the habit of sitting quiet, especially on a 
high-mettled horse, and utterly to avoid touch- 
ing him with any other part than those which 
we use in securing a firm seat You must 



54 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

know that it is orthodox to calm him down 
with a chirrup 5^ and to rouse him by cluck- 
ing; still, if from the first you should cluck 
when caressing and chirrup when punishing, 
the horse would learn to start up at the 
chirrup and calm down at a cluck. So when 
a shout is raised or a trumpet blown, you 
should not let him see you disturbed, least 
of all should you do anything to alarm him, 
but should quiet him down so far as you can 
at such a time, and give him his breakfast 
or his dinner if circumstances should permit. 
But the best piece of advice I can give is not 
to get a very high-mettled horse to use in 
war. 

As for a sluggish horse, I think it sufficient 
to set down that your method of handling 
him should at all times be just the opposite 
to that which I recommended in the case of 
the high-mettled one.s* 





CHAPTER X. 



IF you desire to handle a good war-horse 
so as to make his action the more mag- 
nificent and striking, you must refrain from 
pulling at his mouth with the bit as well as 
from spurring and whipping him. Most 
people think that this is the way to make 
him look fine; but they only produce an 
effect exactly contrary to what they desire, — 
they positively blind their horses by jerking 
the mouth up instead of letting them look 
forward, and by spurring and striking scare 
them into disorder and danger. This is the 



56 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

way horses behave that are fretted by their 
riders into ugly and ungraceful action; but 
if you teach your horse to go with a light 
hand on the bit, and yet to hold his head 
well up and to arch his neck, you will be 
making him do just what the animal himself 
glories and delights in. A proof that he 
really delights in it is that when a horse is 
turned loose and runs off to join other horses, 
and especially towards mares, then he holds 
his head up as high as he can, arches his 
neck in the most spirited style, lifts his legs 
with free action, and raises his tail. So 
when he is induced by a man to assume 
all the airs and graces which he puts on 
of himself when he is showing off voluntarily, 
the result is a horse that likes to be ridden, 
that presents a magnificent sight, that looks 
alert, that is the observed of all observers. 
I shall now attempt to explain how I think 
this result may be obtained. 

In the first place you must own at least 
two bits." Let one of them be smooth, 
with the discs on it good-sized; the other 
with the discs heavy, and not standing so 
high, but with the echini sharp, so that. 



CHAPTER X. 57 

when he seizes it, he may drop it from dis- 
like of its roughness. Then, when he shall 
have received the smooth bit in its turn, he 
will like its smoothness and do everything 
on the smooth bit which he has been trained 
to do on the rough. He may, however, come 
not to mind its smoothness and to bear hard 
upon it; and this is why we put the large 
discs on the smooth bit, to make him keep 
his jaws apart and drop the bit. You can 
make the rough bit an3^hing you like by 
holding it lightly or drawing it tight. 

No matter what the kind of bit, it must 
always be flexible. When a horse seizes a 
stiff bit, he holds the whole of it at once 
against his bars ; he lifts it all, just as a man 
does a spit, at whatever point he takes it up. 
But the other kind acts like a chain ; only the 
part that you are grasping remains unbend- 
ing, and the rest hangs loose. So, as the 
horse is always after the part that is getting 
away from him in his mouth, he drops the 
bit from his bars. For the same reason little 
rings are hung from the joints of the bit in 
the middle, so that the horse, in trying to 
catch them with his tongue and teeth, may 



58 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

not think of snatching up the bit against his 
bars.s^ 

I will set down tlie definitions of flexible 
and stifT bits, in case some reader may not 
know them. The bit is flexible when the 
joints are broad and smooth where they meet, 
so that it bends easily; and all the pieces put 
on round the joints are more likely to be 
flexible if they are roomy and not tight. On 
the contrary, if the different parts of the bit 
do not run and play into each other easily, 
the bit is a stiff one. 

Whatever the kind of bit, it must be used 
according to the following rules, which are 
in every case the same, provided that it is 
desired to give a horse the look that has been 
described. The horse's mouth must not be 
checked too harshly, so that he will toss his 
head, nor too gently for him to feel it. The 
moment he acknowledges it and begins to 
raise his neck, give him the bit. And in 
everything else, as I have insisted over and 
over again, the horse should be rewarded 
as long as he behaves well. When you see a 
horse show his pleasure by carrying his neck 
high and yielding to the hand, there is no 



CHAPTER X. 59 

need of using harsh measures, as though you 
were forcing him to work ; he should rather 
be coaxed on, as when you wish him to rest. 
He will then go forward most cheerfully to 
his swift paces. A proof that the horse 
enjoys fast running is that when he has got 
loose he never moves at a walk, but runs. It 
is his nature to enjoy it, unless he is obliged 
to run an excessive distance. Neither horse 
nor man likes anything in the world that is 
excessive. 

When it comes to his riding in a proud 
and stately style, — in the first part of his 
training we accustomed him, you remember, 
to dash forward at full speed after making 
the turns. Well, after he has learned this, if 
you support him by the bit and at the same 
moment give him one of the signs to dash 
forward, the bit holds him in and the signal 
to advance rouses him up. He will then 
throw out his chest and raise his legs rather 
high, and furiously though not flexibly ; for 
horses do not use their legs very flexibly 
when they are being hurt. Now if, when his 
fire is thus kindled, you let him have the bit, 
the slackness of it makes him think that he is 



6o 



XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 



given his head, and in his joy thereat he will 
bound along with proud gait and prancing 
legs, imitating exactly the airs that he puts 
on before other horses. Everybody that sees 
such a horse cries out that he is free, willing, 
fit to ride, high-mettled, brilliant, and at once 
beautiful and fiery in appearance. 

So much for this subject, in case you are 
an admirer of such action. 





CHAPTER XL 



IF you chance to wish to own a horse for 
parade,ss a high-stepper and of showy 
action, such qualities are not, as a rule, to be 
found in every horse, but he must have, to 
start with, the natural gifts of high spirit and 
strong body. Some people fancy that if a 
horse has supple legs, it follows that he will 
be able to rear his body on them ; but this is 
not the fact. It is the horse with supple 
loins, and short and strong ones too, that 
can do this. I do not mean the loins at the 
tail, but at the belly, between the ribs and 



62 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the haunches. Such a horse will be able to 
gather the hind legs well in under the fore.s^ 
Now when he has gathered them well in, if 
you take him up with the bit, he falls back 
on his hocks and raises his forehand so that 
his belly and sheath can be seen from the 
front. You must give him the bit when he 
does this, and it will look to the spectators 
as if he were doing all of his own accord 
the prettiest feat that a horse can do. There 
are, to be sure, some persons who teach this 
movement either by tapping the hocks with 
a rod, or by directing somebody to run along 
by the side and strike him with a stick under 
the gaskins. But for my part, I think, as 
I have said all along, that it is the best of 
lessons if the horse gets a season of repose 
whenever he has behaved to his rider's 
satisfaction. 

For what the horse does under compulsion, 
as Simon also observes, is done without 
understanding ; and there is no beauty in it 
either, any more than if one should whip and 
spur a dancer. There would be a great deal 
more ungracefulness than beauty in either a 
horse or a man that was so treated. No, he 



CHAPTER XI. 63 

should show off all his finest and most bril- 
liant performances willingly and at a mere 
sign. " If he goes on at his exercise till he is 
covered with sweat, and then if you dismount 
and unbridle him the moment he rears up in 
fine style, you must be sure that he will come 
to the act of rearing with a will. This is the 
attitude in which the horses of gods and 
heroes are always depicted, and men who 
can handle a horse gracefully in it are a 
magnificent sight The horse rearing thus 
is such a thing of wonder as to fix the eyes 
of all beholders, young or old. Nobody, I 
assure you, either leaves him or gets tired 
of watching him as long as he presents the 
brilliant spectacle. 

Yet if it chance that the owner of such a 
horse should command a troop 57 or regiment 
of cavalry, he should not aspire to be the 
only brilliant figure himself, but should tr>^ 
all the more to make the whole line that 
follows a sight worth seeing. If he goes 
on ahead at an extremely slow pace, with 
his horse rearing very high and very often, 
it is obvious that the rest of the horses 
would have to follow him at a walk. What 



64 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

could there be at all brilliant in such a 
sight as this? But if you rouse your horse 
and take the lead at a gait neither too fast 
nor too slow, but simply suited to the horses 
that are most spirited, alert, and graceful in 
action, with such leading the general effect is 
complete, and the horses prance and snort all 
together, so that not only you yourself but 
all that follow after would be a sight well 
worth seeing.s^ 

To, conclude, if a man buys his horses 
skilfully, feeds them so that they can bear 
fatigue, and handles them properly in training 
them for war, in exercising them for the 
parade and in actual service in the field, what 
is there to prevent him from making his 
horses more valuable than when he acquired 
them, and hence from owning horses that are 
famous and from becoming famous himself 
in the art of horsemanship? Nothing except 
the interposition of some divinity. 





CHAPTER XII. 



I WISH also to set down how the man who 
is to run the hazard of battle on horse- 
back should be armed. To begin with the 
cuirass.s9 This must always be made to fit 
the body; for if it fits well, the body sup- 
ports its weight, but if it is very loose, the 
shoulders have to carry it all by themselves. 
As for too tight a cuirass, it is a strait- 
jacket and not a piece of armour. Next,. 
as the neck is one of the vital parts, I say 
that a covering should be made for it rising 
out of the cuirass itself to fit the neck.^ 
This will at once be an ornament ; and if it 
is made as it should be, it will cover the 

5 



66 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

rider's face when he pleases as far as the 
nose. For a helmet the Boeotian ^' is the 
best, in my opinion, since it most completely 
protects all the parts that are above the 
cuirass, without preventing you from seeing. 
Let the cuirass be made so as not to hinder 
sitting nor stooping. Round the belly, the 
groin, and thereabouts, there should be 
flaps of such material and number as to pro- 
tect these parts. Since the horseman is dis- 
abled if anything happens to his left arm, I 
consequently recommend the newly invented 
piece of armour called the arm!"^ It protects 
the shoulder, the arm, the elbow, and the 
part that holds the reins, and it can be ex- 
tended or bent together; besides it covers 
the gap left by the cuirass under the armpit. 

The right arm must of course be raised 
whenever the rider wants to hurl his javelin 
or to strike a blow. The part of the cuirass 
that hinders this must therefore be removed, 
and in its place flaps put on at the joints, 
unfolding all together when the arm is raised 
and closing when it is lowered. For the arm 
itself, something worn like a greave^^ seems 
to me better than to have it of a piece with 



CHAPTER XII. 67 

the cuirass. The part of the arm that is 
bared when it is raised ^-^ must be protected 
near the cuirass with calfskin or bronze, else 
it will be left unguarded in its most vital part. 

Now, as the rider himself is in extreme 
danger if anything happens to his horse, the 
animal also should be armed with a front- 
let, breastplate, and thigh-pieces ; ^^ the last 
serve at the same time to cover the thighs 
of the rider. Above all, the horse's belly 
should be protected, as being the most vital 
and the weakest part. It may be protected 
with the cloth. This cloth ^ must also be of 
such material and so sewed together as to 
give the rider a safe seat and not to gall the 
horse's back. For the rest, this should be 
the armour for horse and man; but as the 
shins and feet would of course project below 
the thigh-pieces, they too may be armed 
with top-boots ^^ of the leather of which shoes 
are made. These will at once protect the 
shins and cover the feet. 

This and the grace of the gods is the defen- 
sive armour. For offensive, I recommend the 
sabre ^ rather than the sword ; for the rider 
being aloft, a scimitar blow will be more in 



6S XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

place than the thrust of a sword. Instead of 
a spear of scantling, which is weak and 
clumsy to carry, I am inclined to recommend 
two javelins^ made of cornel wood. A skil- 
ful person can throw one and then use the 
other in front, on the flank, or in the rear. 
They are also stronger than the spear and 
handier to carry. 

I recommend hurling the javelin at the 
longest possible range. This gives more 
time to recover oneself and to seize the other 
javelin. I will set down in a few words the 
best method of hurling the javelin. Throw 
forward the left, draw back the right, rise 
from the thighs, and let it go with the point 
slightly raised. Then it will carry with the 
greatest force and the longest range, and it 
will be sure to hit the mark, provided tlie 
point is always aimed at the mark when you 
let it go. 

This completes the hints, lessons, and ex- 
ercises on which I was to write for the pri- 
vate. The knowledge and practice necessary 
for the commander of cavalry have been set 
forth already in a different work.7° 




THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 

XENOPHON'S " Treatise on Horseman- 
ship " is the oldest extant work on the 
subject in any language, and the only one 
which has come down to us in either Greek 
or Latin. That the author was well entitled 
to begin it as he does, will be granted by 
every reader of his masterpiece, the Anaba- 
sis. But though in the ill-fated expedition 
which that book describes, he travelled 
nearly three thousand miles, generally on 
horseback, yet this journey occupied only a 
little more than a year of his life ; and prob- 



JO XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

ably before the expedition, and certainly after 
it, he saw service in the cavalry. 

VVe know very little of the life of Xeno- 
phon before the year 401 B. C, in which he 
joined the army of Cyrus. He was an Athe- 
nian, and from a very early age was the 
follower and friend of Socrates. "Whether at 
the time of the Anabasis he was forty years 
old or only a little over thirty, is a question 
which not all the wisdom of the learned has 
yet been able to settle. After the disastrous 
failure of Cyrus's enterprise, it was Xenophon, 
until then a mere honorary staff-officer, who 
aroused his companions from their dejection ; 
the remainder of the Anabasis tells the story 
how his courage and skill brought them back 
to Greek lands from among the Persians. 
But his success was not appreciated at 
Athens, and he was banished for serving with 
Spartans and against the Persians, with whom 
the Athenians had latterly allied themselves. 
Becoming again a soldier of fortune, he 
joined the king of Sparta, Agesilaus, and 
followed him against Athens and Thebes in 
the battle of Coronea, 394 B. c. For his ser- 
vices the Spartans presented him with an 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 7 1 

estate at Scillus in Elis, about 387 B. C. ; and 
there he lived for more than fifteen years, 
with his wife Philesia and their sons Gryllus 
and Diodorus. In this retirement were pro- 
duced several of his well-known works. 
After the battle of Leuctra, in 371, he was 
driven out of Scillus and went to Corinth. 
Some tell us that the Athenians recalled him 
from exile, and that his last years were spent 
in his native city ; others say that he died in 
Corinth. It is certain that his sons, at least, 
were in the service of Athens in the cam- 
paign which closed with Mantinea in 362. 
Not long before this battle he wrote "The 
General of Horse," as we know from allusions 
in it to the approaching hostilities. This 
book, in turn, is referred to in the treatise 
on Horsemanship, which must have shortly 
followed ; and one likes to believe that both 
were designed by the old soldier to serve for 
the guidance of his sons. The labor of love, 
if such it was, failed not of reward. The sons 
were worthy of their father, and for their 
courage and manly beauty won the title of 
the Dioscuri, the " Great Twin Brethren." 
The elder, Gryllus, crowned his life by falling 



72 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

gloriously at Mantinea. "And there came 
one to Xenophon as he was offering sacrifice, 
and said, * Gryllus is dead/ And Xenophon 
took off the garland that was on his head, 
but ceased not his sacrifice. Then the mes- 
senger said, * His death was noble.' And 
Xenophon returned the garland to his head 
again ; and it is in the tale that he shed no 
tears, but said, * I knew that I begat him 
mortal.* " So runs the story ; and it is added 
that Diodorus came safely out of the battle, 
and lived to rear a son of his brother's name. 
Xenophon himself died at a good old age, not* 
later than 355. 

There is .no reason for doubting the tradi- 
tion that Xenophon's family belonged to the 
Equestrian * class in the state, and that conse- 
quently he served in the cavalry in his youth. 
He was old enough to have borne a man's 
part in the last years of the Peloponnesian 
War and during the episode of the Thirty 
Tyrants ; but history does not even mention 
his name in connection with either. Still, his 
whole bearing during the retreat of the Ten 
Thousand was far from being that of a mere 
* See p. 75. 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 73 

tiro in military affairs, and it is safe to 
assume that he had already seen service in 
the Athenian cavalry. Even after the battle 
of Coronea he still had opportunities for 
keeping up his acquaintance with horses. 
He was always as far as possible from being 
a closet scholar; and no man not a lover 
of the free, vigorous outdoor life of the 
country could write, as Xenophon does in 
the " Oeconbmicus," with such a particular 
acquaintance with all the various sides of a 
country gentleman's life. The preparation 
of the soil for all its different products, the 
tilling and sowing, and then the reaping, 
threshing, and winnowing of the grain, the 
planting and tending of trees and flowers, 
the care of that all-important olive which 
entered into so many of the relations of 
Greek life, — all these were familiar to him, 
and the oversight of the farm-labourers and 
bailiffs as well. Nor did he neglect field- 
sports. Once a year there was a grand hunt 
on his estate to which all the country round 
was invited; and his treatise on Hunting, 
with its full account of the breeding and the 
training of dogs, shows that the annual hunt 



74 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

was by no means the only one in which 
he took part. Surely these pursuits called 
for horse-raising, horse-training, and horse- 
riding; and that he became a master in each, 
the treatise on Horsemanship is evidence 
enougji. 

This treatise is confined to the horse that 
is to be ridden, not driven ; and the remarks 
which follow will therefore be limited in the 
same way. Riding, as a habit, seems to have 
come into practice later than driving; at 
least, this is true of the Greeks. A few 
passages in Homer are often quoted to 
show that even in the Heroic Age men 
sometimes used horses for riding ; but this 
interpretation of the passages is a mistake, 
and the whole general tone of Epic poetry 
proves that driving was the common prac- 
ticed^ In battle, cavalry was utterly un- 
known. The heroes fought in chariots, the 
mass of the army on foot; and journeys, 
even over mountainous country, were made 
in chariots. 

But in the course of the following centuries 
there came about a change. We cannot 
trace its development ; but it is a fact that in 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 75 

the Olympic games, in which originally the 
only equestrian contests were chariot races, 
there was instituted a race for full-grown 
riding-horses as early as the thirty-third 
Olympiad (648 B. C.). In battle the chariot 
had disappeared even before the Persian 
wars, but its place was not filled by cavalry 
until after them. The Athenians had no 
cavalry at Marathon ; and although we know 
that wealthy citizens kept horses, it is prob- 
able that they were bred for racing. Doubt- 
less it was acquaintance with the Persian 
cavalry that led to the organization of a body 
of horse at Athens. From the first and 
throughout its history, it was a corps d^HitCy 
selected from the second highest class of citi- 
zens in order of wealth. The whole body 
consisted of only a thousand men, one hun- 
dred from each of the ten Attic tribes ; each 
hundred was commanded by a pJiylarch, 
and the entire corps by two hipparchs. It 
was under the especial oversight of the 
Senate; entrance into it, while enforced 
upon the physically and pecuniarily able, 
was governed by a strict examination, and 
the horseman was required to present him- 



y6 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

self before an examining committee,* with his 
charger, and his equipments, all in a condition 
to conform to the law. In spite of their care, 
however, the Greeks never accomplished the 
revolution in military art which gave cavalry 
a decisive rdle in action. This was reserved 
for the Macedonians. Greek cavalry was 
used, as a rule, only to harass a marching 
enemy, or to follow up and complete a vic- 
tory already won ; and probably horsemen 
seldom went nearer than within javelin shot 
of a body of infantry in line of battle. 

That only the rich could serve in this arm 
is evident from the facts that each man had to 
supply his own horse, and that horses were 
very expensive animals. A very ordinary 
horse cost three minae, or sixty-four dollars ; 
a fine animal, such as would be used in war 
or for racing, much more. Thus we hear of 
what might be called a thoroughbred as cost- 
ing twelve minae,7* one hundred and eighty- 
six dollars. Xenophon paid a little less than 
this for a war-horse which he bought in 
Lampsacus. Such prices for fine horses 

* See the accompanying illustration, and its descrip- 
tion on page 163. 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. yj 

seem low to us ; but it should be remembered 
that the cheapness of a given article is rela- 
tive to the cost of other articles at. the time 
in question. In Greek antiquity, the neces- 
saries of life were in general to be bought for 
comparatively less money than at the pres- 
ent day. A house cost from three to one 
hundred and twenty minae ($54 to ^2,160), 
according to its size, situation, and condition ; 
perhaps an average price was from ten to 
forty minae (^180 to $720). Barley cost 
two drachmae the medimmis (thirty-six cents 
for a bushel and a half) ; wheat, three 
drachmae (fifty-four cents). An ox could be 
had for from fifty to one hundred drachmae 
(nine to eighteen dollars) ; a sheep, for ten 
to twenty drachmae ; a sucking pig, for three 
drachmae; a lamb, for ten drachmae. For 
the usual garment of the working classes the 
same price was paid as for a lamb (^1.80); 
for a cloak, such as cavalrymen wore, twelve 
drachmae (;^2.i6). These prices are gleaned 
by Boeckh* here and there throughout the 
literature. A comparison of them makes it 
evident that a horse was an expensive piece 

* In " Die Staatshaushaltung der Athener." 



78 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

of property; and indeed horse-owning, with 
all that was too apt to follow it, became a 
synonym for extravagance. 

Horse-raising was a pursuit for which the 
nature of the Greek soil was not well fitted ; 
the countries were too rugged and mountain- 
ous, the plains in them few and small. Chief 
among the breeds for beauty, courage, and 
endurance was the Thessalian. It was re- 
nowned in the very earliest times, but then 
of course for driving and not for riding. The 
mares of King Diomedes which ate human 
flesh, the horses of Rhesus, of Achilles, and 
of Orestes in the race described by Sophocles 
in the " Electra," — finally, to come down from 
mythology to history, Alexander's charger, 
Bucephalas, were all of this famous breed. 
Others in high favour were the Argive, 
Acarnanian, Arcadian, and Epidaurian; but 
nothing is known of the differences between 
these breeds or of the peculiar merits of 
each. 

In spite of the natural disadvantages of the 
soil of Attica, the Athenian young men de- 
voted themselves with much zeal to the rais- 
ing and training of horses for the turf or for 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 79 

war; and old Strepsiades * was not the only 
father who had to lament that he was ruined 
by a horse-complaint. The great space de- 
voted on the frieze of the Parthenon to the 
Athenian cavalry shows clearly what a high 
estimation was set upon the possession of 
beautiful horses, and on dexterity in the man- 
agement of them. Instruction in riding 
began to form a special branch in the educa- 
tion of the higher classes,! and it was there- 
fore natural that men should begin to write 
on the art of horsemanship. 

The celebrated rider Simon, of whom more 
hereafter, was the earliest writer on this art 
whose name is known to us. He was soon 
followed by Xenophon. From the latter's 
treatise we can discover the point which the 
art had reached in the first half of the fourth 
century before the Christian era. We learn 
from it that the only gaits of the horse were 
the walk, the trot, and the gallop with both 
leads ; that he was trained in leaping as well 
as in the demi-pesade, the volte, and the 
oblong career with sharp turns at both ends ; 

* In the comedy of the " Clouds " by Aristophanes, 
t See page 169. 



80 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

that the use of the jointed bit and of the spur 
was understood ; but that curbs, saddles, and 
stirrups were not yet invented. We get also 
much information on the nature of the ani- 
mal himself, and on the care that was taken 
of him. I have found it more convenient to 
say what seemed necessary on all these mat- 
ters in the notes which follow this essay. 
But Xenophon's first chapter is devoted to 
the physique of the animal ; and in it he sets 
forth what, in his opinion, are the distinguish- 
ing marks of a good horse. This is a subject 
which may be better treated here than in the 
notes. 

In the matter of judging the points of a 
horse, the ancient requirements were not in 
all respects like the modern. The advance 
in anatomical knowledge accounts for some 
differences ; but it is also probable, as Schlie- 
ben * observes, that we, like the men of old, 
are prejudiced by habit in favour of the type 
with which we are familiar. If qualities 
which they thought beautiful seem ugly to 
us, it should be remembered that our stand- 
ard does not always conform even to that of 
the last century. 

* In "Die Pferde des Altertums." 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 8 1 

Our knowledge of the taste of the Greeks 
in this matter is drawn from two sources, — 
the literary and the artistic. Schlieben, in his 
interesting book on the Horse in Antiquity, 
seems to think that the three principal forms 
of art — vase-paintings, reliefs, and statues in 
the round — each exhibit peculiarities of treat- 
ment innate to the artistic form, which make 
it impossible to reach, from a comparison of 
them all, any distinct conception of the best 
type of Greek horse. Then turning to the 
writers, he is further confused by finding that 
points of excellence upon which they all 
agree are not apparent in the works of the 
artists. Hence he assumes different ideals 
for the artists and the writers. He even 
thinks that in one point, at least, the unani- 
mous agreement of the writers is reversed by 
as complete a contrary agreement in works 
of art. This point is the mane. He makes 
the common errors of believing that all the 
artists represent it as short, and that all 
the writers say that it should be long. 
Neither belief is more than an assumption, 
and a baseless one at that, as will appear 
later. The fact is, Schlieben seems to expect 

6 



82 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

to find in the works of all sorts of artists, 
good, bad, and indifferent, the same consen- 
sus that really is to be found in the writings 
of the authors. But the works of art have 
survived to us from different centuries by- 
means of all kinds of accidents, and they were 
produced for all kinds of reasons. The books 
have survived, generally, for the reason that 
they were fittest for survival. The authors 
lived, none of them, before the classical period, 
and each of them undertook to describe a 
horse because he knew the animal himself, 
and had spent a good part of his life with 
horses, or because he could copy the words 
of authors of more practical experience than 
his own. There can be no question of the 
vast advantage of the books over the works 
of art in deciding such a matter as this. 

There would be nothing very surprising, 
therefore, in the want of agreement in art, if 
such want there be, upon a type of horse 
which we can take for the ideal animal. But 
nobody should thence proceed to argue that 
there was no such type already determined 
by judges of horseflesh and agreed upon 
even by artists. It would be much more 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 83 

likely that it was the want of technical skill 
which prevented the artist from representing 
what he had in mind to represent; then, too, 
he might be fettered by convention. When 
we look at a picture on an archaic vase, we 
are standing at the very cradle of the art of 
painting, — in order of time the last of the fine 
arts which the Greeks developed. And we 
see on vases of the more cultivated period 
many things which illustrate the power which 
lies in methods sanctified by custom — that is, 
in convention — to over-ride the real know- 
ledge of the art of painting and the greater 
perfection of technique which existed at the 
time of the production of such works. In 
criticising an equestrian statue or a relief for 
a frieze, one should always remember that it 
was intended to be placed at a considerable 
elevation and to be looked at from below, so 
that exaggeration of certain parts was often 
necessary, — such, for instance, as in the 
treatment of the eyes of the famous horse's 
head by Phidias * in the eastern pediment of 
the Parthenon. But when all allowances are 
made, a perfect horse is as rare a thing in 
* See the opposite cut. 



84 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Greek art as he is in nature. Even on the 
Parthenon frieze, where there are finer horses 
than in any other works of Greek art, some 
animals have faults which are apparent to the 
veriest tiro. In fact, if we should judge 
altogether by what has survived to us, it 
must be admitted that in representing the 
horse in all the different forms of art the 
ancients have been surpassed by modern 
artists. By Phidias we have only the heads 
that were in the pediments; for the figures 
on the frieze, although designed by him, 
were certainly not carved by his own hand. 
But Phidias stood alone, and far above con- 
temporaries and successors. Still, in spite of 
the fact that many ancient representations of 
the horse have no claim to beauty or to cor- 
rectness in composition, there are others 
which will better bear criticism, some de- 
serve high praise, • and we read of artists 
who won great fame in antiquity for the 
realism with which they depicted the animal. 
Apelles, to whom Philip and Alexander often 
sat for their likenesses, is said to have painted 
a horse ^3 with such truth to nature that a 
live horse neighed at the picture ! Pauson 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 85 

was commissioned to paint a horse rolling,* 
but he painted him running with a cloud of 
dust about him. The man who gave the 
order naturally objected, whereupon the 
master turned tlie picture upside down, and 
behold! the patron's stipulations were ful- 
filled.7* Criticism could discover only one 
defect in a painting by Micon; the famous 
rider Simon remarked that he had never 
before seen a horse with eyelashes on the 
lower lids.^s Such stories, in spite of mani- 
fest exaggerations, show that extant works 
are not a fair criterion of the skill of the great 
painters. Not a single work remains that can 
be traced to any of them ; but doubtless to 
their art, in comparison with what survives, 
might have been applied lines like Donne's, 
written of a contemporary of his own, — 

" A hand or eye 
By Hilyarde drawne, is worth an history 
By a worse painter made." 

In sculpture, both in the round and in 
relief, and in reliefs on coins, the extant 
works are far more satisfactory ; for they rep- 

* See p. 131. 



86 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

resent branches of art which had reached 
near to perfection before the Greeks really 
began to develop painting. But here again, 
as I have said, we lack complete examples of 
works illustrating the horse by the greatest 
masters, except perhaps by the best design- 
ers for the coinage. On the whole, it seems 
impossible, from a comparison of the works 
of art alone, to determine what shape of 
horse was generally approved by the Greek 
connoisseur. It remains to inquire whether 
the literature helps us in this direction. 

The oldest known description in Greek of 
a good horse was contained in Simon's trea- 
tise on Horsemanship, of which we have only 
fragments. One, however, is of considerable 
length, and this happens to contain his advice 
on the choice of a horse. Then comes 
Xenophon; but after him we find nothing 
professing exactness until the Roman period. 
Varro, writing in 37 B. C, and Vergil, who 
published his " Georgics " a little later, are 
the only others before the Christian era. 
Then come in the first century Calpurnius 
and Columella, in the third Oppian and 
Nemesian, and in the fourth Apsyrtus, Pela- 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 8/ 

gonius, and Palladius.^^ There are of course 
countless allusions to the points of the horse 
in numerous other authors, but I have here 
named all the extant writers who have de- 
scribed with any exactness and completeness 
the best type of the animal; and in another 
part of this book (p. 107) will be found 
translations which I have made from them 
all. 

These writers are scattered through a period 
of nearly eight hundred years, but it is evi- 
dent that they all had in mind an animal of 
the same general stamp. Schlieben writes as 
though the descriptions given by the several 
writers really differed in essential particulars ; 
but this is very far from being the case, and 
his study of the passages cannot have been 
exact. Xenophon's description is by all odds 
the most complete; in his first chapter he 
touches upon over thirt}' points, many more 
than are mentioned by any other writer. A 
careful examination of them all shows that 
there are only five points mentioned by 
others but omitted by him ; namely, shoulder- 
blades (large, Simon and Apsyrtus; broad, 
Varro ; strong, Nemesian) ; teeth (small,. 



88 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Simon) ; gaskins (not fleshy, Simon) ; veins 
(visible all over the body, Varro) ; coronet, 
(moderate, Pelagonius). On the other hand, 
the other writers never disagree with Xeno- 
phon in the points which they do mention. 
The only approach to such disagreement 
is the long barrel apparently required by 
both Simon and by Palladius ; but Xeno- 
phon was speaking only of riding-horses, 
while there is nothing to show that these 
writers had not also in mind horses for driv- 
ing. It is true that we find some additions 
to Xenophon's descriptions of certain points; 
but these are only additions and not contra- 
dictions, and he would doubtless have agreed 
with most of them. Such, for instance, are 
the muscles bulging out all over the chest 
(Vergil, Columella, Apsyrtus, Palladius), the 
jaw brought close to the neck (Simon, 
Oppian), the straight cannons (Columella, 
Oppian). It appears, then, that there is a 
very close agreement among the different 
writers; further, the resemblance in their 
language and the order in which they take 
up the various points show that they were 
frequently copying from one another or from 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 89 

a common source now lost to us.* There can 
be little doubt, therefore, that even before 
Xenophon's time an ideal or normal type 
had been established which was to find 
acceptance throughout the whole period of 
Greek and Roman antiquity. 

Now, when we compare Xenophon's de- 
scription of a good horse with the best 
horses on the frieze of the Parthenon, we find 
a remarkable similarity. In fact, as " Stone- 
henge " f remarks, *' here we have described 
a cobby but spirited and corky horse, with a 
light and somewhat peculiar carriage of the 
head and neck, just as we see represented on 
the Elgin marbles." It has been thought by 
some that Xenophon based his description 
upon these very reliefs, and it is of course 
possible that they may have served as a sort 
of guide to his words. But from earlier 
works still, in vase-paintings of extremely 

♦ A lost work by the elder Pliny contained a de- 
scription of the normal horse, generally accepted by 
his contemporaries. See his Natural History, viii, 
162. 

t In his book on the Horse, near the beginning of 
which he gives the most exact translation of Xeno- 
phon's description which I have ever seen. 



90 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

rude workmanship, presenting pictures which 
to the PhiHstine are nothing but ridiculous 
caricatures, — even in these early productions 
and still more frequently on the later vases, 
there are traces which show that it was the 
artist's hand that was at fault, or that he was 
governed by convention, and that there was 
present before his mind something very like 
the conception which the assistants of Phidias 
were enabled to work out, — some of them, 
it is true, without the full measure of success, 
others almost to perfection. It was, I believe, 
not the w^ant of a type, but of the genius to 
give expression to the type, or again it was 
the power of convention, that prevented those 
artists whose works have survived from 
enabling us to settle from their productions 
the question which has engaged us. The 
type of horse portrayed on the frieze was a 
very old one, even in the fifth century ; the 
minute description of the points given by 
Xenophon and confirmed by other writers, 
helps us to detect the faults which a Greek 
horseman would have seen in some of the 
figures on the frieze. To obtain, therefore, 
a correct conception of the Greek idea of a 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 9 1 

good horse, one should compare the first 
chapter of Xenophon's treatise with the best 
animals on the Parthenon. Some assistance 
may be had from the brief summary of the 
defects of a horse as given by Pollux* (1,191). 
These are as follows : — 

" Horn thin, hoofs full, fat, soft, flat, or, as 
Xenophon calls them, low-lying. Heavy 
fetlocks, varicose veins in the shanks, flabby 
thighs, hollow shoulder-blades, projecting 
neck, mane bald, narrow chest, head fat and 
heavy, large ears, nostrils converging, sunken 
eyes, thin meagre sides, sharp backbone, 
rough haunches, thin buttocks, stiff legs, 
knees hard to bend." 

There is one point, however, which seems 
to call for special notice, and that is the 
mane. As I have already said, Schlieben 
has fallen into the common error of believing 
that the writers require the mane to be long, 
but that in works of art it is nearly always 
cut short. But a careful reading of the 
authors will show that the word "long" is 
never applied to the mane by any of them. 
The adjectives are "thick," "full," "fine- 
* See note 76. 



92 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

haired," " crinkly," and it is said to fold over 
to the right All these expressions might be 
applied to a short, and the first even to a 
hogged, mane. Xenophon comes nearest to 
calling the mane long when he uses the 
phrase eo)? av KOfxojcnvy which I have ren- 
dered "while it is flowing" (chap, v, p. 32). 
But the context shows that it is there a 
question of mane or no mane, not of short or 
long. And there is nothing in the chapter 
to show that Xenophon disapproved of keep- 
ing the mane down by trimming ; there must 
be plenty to take hold of in mounting, he 
says, and enough for beauty. On the other 
hand, it is evident that he would have had no 
hogging of the mane, and none of the other 
writers mention such a thing. But Xenophon's 
very insistence on the beauty of- a flowing 
mane seems to me to show that not all the 
world agreed with him; he is as earnest 
about it as if he were a member of the 
Humane Society preaching against docking. 
It is not surprising to me, therefore, to find 
in works of art the portrayal of a different 
fashion. Probably most people, if asked to 
describe the mane of the Greek horse, would 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 93 

say that it was hogged ; at least, that is the 
answer which I have almost invariably re- 
ceived on putting the question. There can 
be, I think, no doubt that the hogged mane 
was a fashion which existed in Greek anti- 
quity, silent about it though the writers may 
be; the difficulty is to discover whether it 
always existed side by side with the flowing 
■ mane, or whether it went out of fashion after 
a certain period. Still harder would it be to 
determine whether hogging was practised 
only upon horses of a certain breed or size, 
as it generally is with us, or upon horses in- 
tended only for special purposes. Into these 
questions I have not entered, but I believe 
light might be cast upon them by a careful 
study and comparison of works of art.^^ A 
mere glance through such a well-known book 
as Baumeister's " Denkmaler des Klassischen 
Altertums " shows a number of examples of 
hogged manes. Omitting for the moment 
the Parthenon marbles, striking instances will 
be found as follows : the Oropus relief, p. 69 ; 
Phigalia frieze, plate xliv; very ancient 
terra cotta from Melos, p. 1290; Dipylon 
vase, p. 1943; Mycene vase, p. 1941 ; black- 



94 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

figured vase, p. 20S1. But it would be a 
great mistake to suppose that the hogged 
mane is the only fashion in art. In the same 
book examples of long straight or long curly 
manes are found as follows: black-figured 
vases, pp. 6^, 725 ; Corinthian vase, p. 1962 ; * 
altar of Pergamon, p. 1257; Vienna cameo, 
p. 1390; Frangois vase, plate Ixxiv ; Trajan's 
column, p. 2057. Short and curly manes are 
to be seen ; for instance, on a late vase, p. 728, 
and a Pompeian wall-painting, p. 66t, It is 
a dangerous thing to offer an opinion on such 
a point without much more exhaustive re- 
search than I have made ; but I have been led 
to believe, from these and many pictures in 
other books, that the hogged mane was an 
old fashion, which in the time of Xenophon 
was passing away.^^ Although I admit that 
much is to be said on the other side, yet I 
am strengthened in this belief by observing 
that out of nearly a hundred horses on the 
Parthenon friezes only about thirty have 
hogged manes, and that frequently these 
thirty have an unfinished look in other 
points, so that many of them, as works of 
♦ I give an illustration of this vase on page 22. 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 95 

art, are of inferior quality. It should be said, 
however, that the manes of the pediment 
horses are all hogged. 

In size, it is clear that the ancient Greek 
horse was smaller and not so tall as ours. 
His descendants in their own country still 
retain this characteristic feature. We might 
infer from the whole tone of the descriptions 
by the writers, that they were speaking of a 
small and compactly built animal, although 
we find no exact statements of size or height. 
But there is one passage at the beginning of 
Xenophon's seventh chapter which is very 
significant. It appears that an approved 
method in mounting was to " lay hold of the 
mane adozit the ears'' We should need no 
further evidence than this to prove that 
Athenian cavalry horses were much less high 
than the ordinary saddle-horse is now ; but it 
is supported by the illustrations in art, and 
especially by the reliefs of cavalry horses on 
the Parthenon. But just here let me say that 
I believe that most people fancy the Greek 
horse a great deal smaller than he really was. 
This is because they judge him from the 
Parthenon frieze and other compositions, 



96 XENOPHON ON HORSEiMANSHIP. 

such as vase-paintings, in which he appears 
side by side with men standing on the ground. 
The unthinking observer, comparing the 
height of the horses with the height of the 
men in the same composition, and finding 
that the men are usually as tall or even 
taller than the horses, concludes that the 
Greek horse must have been a very small 
animal indeed. But such a conclusion is 
made in ignorance or in neglect of an impor- 
tant principle of Greek art. By this it was 
required that in a composition of numerous 
figures the heads of all should be nearly 
upon a level, whether the men were walking, 
riding, or driving. This principle, called 
TsokelismoSy does not in practice offend the 
eye, which, recognizing the effect of the 
whole as a work of art, is not troubled by 
the exactness of levels, untruthful to nature 
though it may be. But of course it utterly 
forbids us to use the apparent height of the 
men in such a composition as any standard 
for the real height of animals. A better 
means of judging from the frieze is by ob- 
serving how far the feet of the riders hang 
down below the bellies of their horses. The 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 97 

distance appears to be much greater than in 
the case of men on horseback to-day. It 
should be remembered, however, that the 
cella frieze was placed more than thirty-five 
feet above the floor of the temple, and that 
the outer row of columns prevented the spec- 
tator from standing at a distance to examine 
the frieze. He had to look almost straight 
up. In the British Museum, as well as in 
others, the slabs or casts of them are placed 
much lower. But in their original position, 
the perspective would prevent the feet of 
the men from seeming to dangle so far be- 
low the bellies of their horses.* The dif- 
erence, however, would be slight, and the 
whole build of the horse in these as well as 
in other works of art, stamps him as a small 
animal. Of course the size and height of 
horses varied then just as now. The differ- 

* Since I wrote the above, my friend Dr. Hayley 
informs me that he heard Professor Kekuld make the 
same remark in a course of lectures on the frieze. 
Professor Kekuld also observed that the sculptors of 
this frieze had anticipated some of the discoveries 
made by instantaneous photography in the positions 
of the horse in motion. 



98 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

ent breeds may have had their distinctions 
in this respect ; but, as I have said, we know 
nothing of them. It may be significant, how- 
ever, that on Thessalian and Macedonian 
coins the riding-horses often appear equal 
in size to our own. Little, if anything, can 
be inferred from the almost giraffe-like pro- 
portions of the animal on the most archaic 
vases. 

From the physique of the horse I pass to 
his nature. In reading Xenophon's treatise 
one may be struck by the frequency with 
which this man, well used to riding as he 
was, refers to the horse as a dangerous ani- 
mal to come near. While it should be 
remembered that the Greeks generally used 
entire horses, not geldings, for all purposes 
and especially for war, yet this will not wholly 
account for Xenophon's constant tone of cau- 
tion ; and it is probable that the process of 
domestication, extending through centuries, 
has made a very great difference in the tem- 
perament of the animal, as we know it, from 
what it was in the classical period. Ancient 
literature is not without its stories ^9 of the 
devotion of the horse to his master; but even 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 99 

in these the wildness or the savageness of 
the animal is generally brought out, showing 
itself often in a bloody revenge taken by the 
steed upon the warrior who has killed his 
rider, or in absolute refusal on the part of 
the horse to be mounted by any save his 
accustomed rider. There is, in fact, nothing 
to show that the Greek ever made a friend 
of his horse, least of all that there was ever 
between them that beautiful relation which 
is so common between horse and man in 
Arabian tales. Even the poets, from Homer 
down, did not appreciate what might be 
made of it. Witness the answer of Achilles 
to his horse Xanthus when the noble animal 
did his best to warn his master: "Xanthus, 
why prophesiest thou my death? Nowise 
behooveth it thee ; " and he puts him off 
with scarcely less harshness than that of 
Balaam to his ass.^ Xenophon probably 
comes as near to loving the horse as any 
Greek ever did, and no modern humanitarian 
was ever more earnest in urging over and 
over again the principle of treating horses 
with kindness. His precept, "Never deal 
with the horse when you are in a passion," 



100 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

is a whole treatise in itself. But he has 
not a single word of love for the horse any- 
where, and does not even suggest that the 
rider should try to win his horse's affection 
for its own sake. All his teaching is practi- 
cal: be kind to your horse and he will do 
as you desire. The explanation of all this 
may be that to the Greeks the horse sug- 
gested w^ar, with all the merciless qualities 
which characterized it in antiquity. They 
kept no riding-horses in our sense of the 
word, and we never read of a Greek as taking 
a ride for pleasure. Their horses were bred 
and reared primarily to be machines of battle, 
or for the scarcely less fiercely contested 
struggles in the hippodrome. They had but 
a slight place in the every-day life of men; 
to be sure, they were sometimes used on 
journeys, especially over mountains ; but even 
ambassadors generally travelled on foot, and 
carriages were usually drawn by mules. The 
pomps and processions on festive days were 
so contrived as to be part of the horse's 
training for war. His real business lay 
among warriors; for he was like the horse 
in Job that " saith among the trumpets, Ha, 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. lOI 

ha; and he smelleth the battle afar off, the 
thunder of the captains and the shouting." * 

It may be appropriate, then, to finish this 
sketch by setting down what is known of 
the famous charger of Alexander the Great. 
The names and characteristics of many 
horses of gods or heroes have been trans- 
mitted to us; but Bucephalas is the only 
horse belonging to a mortal about which 
the Greeks have left any particular descrip- 
tion.^' He was of the best Thessalian breed, 
black, with a white star, and very large. As 
Gellius says, "Et capite et nomine Buceph- 
alas fuit." The fact is that, long before this 
famous animal, a well-known type of Thes- 
salian horses had given rise to the name, 
which means " Bull-head." ^^ This type had 
small ears set well apart, thus leaving the brow 
wide and the poll large. " Some people," 
says an unknown writer in the " Geoponics," 
" reckon among the finest horses those with 
eyes which are not a match ; such, they say, 

* Cf. Vergil, Georgics, III, 83: — 

Turn siqua sonum procul arma dedere, 
Stare loco nescit, micat auribus et tremit artus, 
CoUecturaque premens volvit sub naribus ignem. 



102 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

was Bucephalas." If this story is true, he 
had what is sometimes called a ** China eye." 
King Philip bought him from one Philoneicus, 
a Thessalian, — for thirteen talents, as Plu- 
tarch says; for sixteen, according to Pliny 
(from thirteen to eighteen thousand dollars). 
Either price is probably an absurd exagger- 
ation, the result of the later reputation of the 
animal. Evidently the king was not a believer 
in.Xenophon's principle of giving a horse a 
thorough trial before buying him; for, says 
Plutarch, when they brought the king's new 
purchase into the place where they were to 
try him, it appeared that he was a fierce and 
unmanageable beast. " He would neither 
allow anybody to mount him, nor obey any 
of Philip's attendants, but reared and plunged 
against them all, so that the king in a rage 
bade them take him away for an utterly wild 
and unbroken brute. But Alexander, who 
was by, cried out, *What a fine horse that 
is which they are spoiling ! The clumsy cow- 
ards, they can't handle him.' Philip said 
nothing to this at first; but when his son 
kept on grumbling, and seemed to be in a 
great taking, he said at last, *Are you find- 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. IO3 

ing fault with your elders because you know- 
any more yourself, or can handle a horse 
any better than they?' 'I could handle 
that horse, at any rate, a great deal better 
than anybody else,' was the answer. 'And 
what will you forfeit for your rashness if you 
fail ? ' * The price of the horse, by Zeus ! ' 
There was a burst of laughter, and it was so 
agreed. In a moment Alexander ran up to 
the horse, seized the reins, and turned him 
to face the sun; for it seems that he had 
observed that what frightened the creature 
was the sight of his own shadow playing to 
and fro on the ground before him. After a 
little patting and coaxing, seeing him full of 
courage and spirit, Alexander quietly slipped 
off his cloak, and springing up bestrode him 
unharmed. Feeling the bit gently with the 
reins, he restrained him, without whipping 
or hurting him, until he saw that the horse 
had given up all threatening behavior, and 
was only hot for the course; then he let 
him go, and urged him on by raising his 
voice and using his heel. The attendants 
of Philip were anxious and silent at first ; but 
when he turned and came back full of just 



104 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

pride and pleasure, they all raised a cheer, 
except his father. But he, they say, wept 
for joy ; and after Alexander had dismounted, 
said, *You must go look for a kingdom to 
match you, my son; Macedonia is not large 
enough for you.' " 

Alexander was only a boy of twelve when 
this happened; for it was before Aristotle 
became his tutor, — an event which took 
place when the prince was thirteen. Bu- 
cephalas, however, was no young colt, but 
fourteen years old even then. Ever after, 
though he would allow the groom to ride 
him bareback, yet when his trappings were 
on he suffered none save Alexander to mount 
him; others who tried it met with the same 
savage behavior which he had shown at his 
first trial, and were forced to take to their 
own heels to save themselves from his. But 
he bent his knees when Alexander appeared, 
so as to make mounting easy, without wait- 
ing for the word of command. For the rest 
of his life he was Alexander's favorite charger, 
and went with the great king on his expedi- 
tion to the East. In Hyrcania he was stolen, 
but was returned in a hurry on proclamation 



THE GREEK RIDING-HORSE. 105 

that unless he was brought back the whole 
nation — men, women, and children — should 
be cut off. " Thus," remarks Arrian, " he 
was as dear to Alexander as Alexander was 
terrible to the barbarians." He carried the 
king in all his great victories, and finally- 
died at the age of thirty * from wounds re- 
ceived in the battle against the Indian king 
Poms in 327 B. C. Alexander, says Gellius, 
had pressed recklessly forward into the very 
ranks of the enemy, and was the mark for 
every spear. More than one was buried in 
the neck and flanks of the horse ; but though 
at the point of death, and almost drained of 
blood, he turned, carried the king with a 
bold dash from the very midst of the foe, 
and then and there fell down, breathing his 
last tranquilly now that his master was 
safe, and as comforted by it as if he had 
had the feelings of a human being. No 
wonder that Alexander founded the city 
of Bucephalia in his honor, and grieved 
for him as if he had lost a friend; no 
wonder that of this horse only in all Greek 

* The usual extreme limit, according to Aristotle, 
of a horse's years. See page 127. 



I06 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

literature is it written that he was dear to 
his master. 

It is generally believed that the fine bronze 
found at Herculaneum * is a reduced copy of 
the figures of Alexander and Bucephalas 
from the famous group which was made by 
Lysippus, at Alexander's own order, to 
represent a scene at the battle of Granicus. 
Of another likeness of Bucephalas we have 
only a well-known anecdote. Alexander 
once went to see his own portrait with that 
of his horse, painted by Apelles. The king 
did not praise the picture as it deserved. 
But his horse, on being brought up, neighed 
at the horse in the picture as if it were a 
real animal; whereupon, "Your Majesty," 
said Apelles, "your horse seems to be a 
good deal better judge of painting than 
you are." 

* See cut on page 69. 





POINTS OF THE HORSE. 

THE following are the descriptions of a 
good horse, according to the ten Greek 
and Roman writers referred to on page 86. 

SIMON. 
On Simon and his work, see page 119. I have 
translated from the text of Blass, " Liher Miscellaneus 
editus a Societate Philologica Bonnensi," 1863, 



I08 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

p. 49 fi. The fragment here translated is all that 
remains of Simon's book on the horse, except a few 
quotations from it in Pollux. 

If one desires to know this subject well, 
it seems to me that the shape of the horse 
is the first thing. To begin with the country 
of birth, you must know that, so far as Greece 
is concerned, Thessaly is the best. As to 
size there are three accepted terms, — large, 
small, and good-sized, or, if you like, moder- 
ate ; and it is obvious which size each of the 
terms will fit. But moderate size is best in 
every animal. I cannot tell a good horse 
from his colour; however, it seems to me 
that a mane which is of the same colour 
throughout and of fine hair is generally the 
best, and besides it is most unlike that of 
the ass and the mule. A point second to 
none in consideration is that the horse must 
be short above and long below, so that the 
distance shall be short from the withers to 
the haunches, but as long as possible from 
the hind legs to the fore ; next, that he must 
be sound-footed. A good hoof for a horse 
is the light and handy sort, neither broad 
nor too high, and having little flesh but 



POINTS OF THE HORSE. 109 

thick horn. The sound is also a sign of 
the good hoof; for the hollow sort has 
more of the cymbal ring than the full and 
fleshy. Let him have supple pasterns and no 
stiffness of the fetlock joints; his shanks 
should be shaggy, with the parts about the 
back sinew and the shank sinewy and with 
as little flesh as possible up to the knee. 
Above, however, the leg should be fleshier 
and stouter. Let the space between the 
two legs be as wide as possible, for then 
he can throw out his legs without inter- 
fering. His chest should be neither too 
narrow nor too broad, and his shoulder- 
blade very large and very broad indeed. 
Let the neck be slender near the jaw, supple, 
flattened back to the rear, but bending down 
to the front from the slenderest part. The 
head should be advanced, and the neck not 
short. Let him have a high poll, and a 
head flat-nosed but light ; the nostrils should 
be very large, the jaws slender and a match 
for each other, the eyes large, very promi- 
nent and bright, the ears and teeth small, the 
jaw as small as possible, and the part between 
the neck and the jaw very slender. The 



no XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

withers and seat should be very large, the 
sides very broad and deep, and the loin 
supple (you can tell that the loin is sup- 
ple if he does not stand on both his hind 
legs at the same time, but is constantly 
changing from one to the other), the haunch 
very large and broad, the flank very small. 
The gaskins should not be very fleshy ; and 
he should have small stones. Between the 
hams he should not be prominent nor full, 
but only rather swelling a • little, and the 
breech should be very small and well out of 
sight. Let him hold his tail high, and have 
it thick at the base and long. This for the 
shape of the horse. He is by far the best that 
has all these points ; and second is he that has 
the majority of them, including those which 
are of the most service. The colt begins to 
be driven two years after birth. About this 
time he sheds his first feeth, when he is 
thirty months old; the second a year after, 
the last in another year or in less time ; and 
he is at his prime for swiftness and courage 
at six years old. 



POINTS OF THE HORSE. Ill 

VARRO. 

This extract is taken from the "Res Rusticae,'* 
2, 7, 5. The book was written in 37 B. c, when the 
author was eighty years of age. The translation is 
made from the Latin text of Keil. 

What the horse is to be like can be guessed 
from the colt, if it has a small head with well- 
marked parts, black eyes, nostrils not narrow, 
ears close to the head; mane thick, dark, 
rather crinkly, and of fine hair, folding over 
to the right side of the neck; broad, full 
chest; large withers, moderate-sized belly, 
flanks drawn in as you go down, broad 
shoulder-blades, tail full and crinkly ; shanks 
stout, matching, shaped off somewhat towards 
the inside ; knees round and not large, hoofs 
hard. The veins should be visible all over 
the body, convenient for treatment when he 
is not well. 

VERGIL. 

From the " Georgics," 3, 79 ff., published about 
29 B. c. Translated from the text of Ribbeck. 

Lofty is his neck and brisk-moving his 
head; short in the barrel is he, plump of 
back, his undaunted breast swelling with 
folds of muscle. The bays and grays are 



112 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

noble beasts ; the poorest colour is white and 
yellow. Then, when arms clash afar, he 
cannot keep the spot, but pricks up his ears, 
quivers in every limb, and clouds roll from 
his fiery nostrils. His thick mane on his 
right shoulder falls, and there it lies; his 
chine is double where it runs along the back, 
and his firm-horned hoof rings loudly as he 
paws the ground to hollows. 

CALPURNIUS SICULUS. 

From the " Eclogues," 6, 52 £E., written probably 
between 57 and 60 a. d. Translated from the Latin 
by E. J. L. Scott. 

My beast displays 
A deep-set back ; a head and neck 
That tossing proudly feel no check 
From over-bulk ; feet fashioned slight, 
Thin flanks, and brow of massive height; 
While in its narrow horny sheath 
A well-turned hoof is bound beneath. 

COLUMELLA. 

From " De Re Rustica," 6, 29, 2 S., written a 
little before 65 A. D. Translated from the Greek text 
of Schneider. 

Small head, black eyes, nostrils flaring, 
short ears set up straight; neck supple and 



POINTS OF THE HORSE. II3 

broad without being long; mane thick and 
hanging down on the right side; broad chest 
with the muscles bulging out everywhere; 
large straight shoulders; sides curving, seat 
double, belly drawn in, stones small and 
alike, broad flanks sinking in; tail long, 
thick, and crinkly; shanks supple, deep, and 
straight; knee well-turned, small, and not 
turned in ; rounded buttocks ; thighs bulging 
with muscles ever3Avhere; hoofs hard, high, 
hollow, and round, topping off with moderate- 
sized coronets. 

OPPIAN. 

From the " Cynegetica," i, 176 ff., a poem written 
in the first part of the third century. Translated from 
the Greek text of Schneider. 

Let him be large himself and round of 
limb, but small be the head he raises high and 
loftily above his neck ; lofty his crest, but let 
the jaw come down low, inclining towards the 
throat; broad and beautiful should be his 
front between the brows, and from above let 
thickly clustering locks fall about his face; 
under the brow his bright eyes flash with 
ruddy fiery light; wide are his nostrils, 

8 



114 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

small his ears, and fair-sized his mouth; his 
neck well rounded, shaggy with the mane, 
like the helmet with its nodding flowing 
crest; wide his chest, the barrel long, back 
broad, chine double, and loins plump; his 
long-haired tail should flow out far behind 
him; his thighs should be well-knit and 
muscular; below, his shank bones should 
be straight and long, round, handsome, free 
from flesh, like the long-antlered stag's whose 
feet are storm-swift; his pasterns sloping, 
his round hoofs coming well up above the 
ground, compact, horny, and strong. 

NEMESIAN. 

From the " Cynegetica," verse 245 ff., written in 
the second half of the third century. Translated from 
the Latin text of Haupt. 

His back is smooth and broad of surface ; 
flank very long ; the belly small, even on large 
animals ; brow lofty, ears mobile, head hand- 
some, and crest high; eyes flashing with 
radiant light; his neck mighty and arching 
back to his stout shoulders ; the breath of his 
hot nostrils rolls forth like steam; his foot 



POINTS OF THE HORSE. II5 

loves not the task of standing still, but his 
hoof smites the ground continually, and his 
high spirit wearies out his own limbs. 

APSYRTUS. 

Apsyrtus was a veterinary surgeon under Con- 
stantine the Great in the first part of the fourth 
century. The translation is from the compilation 
called the " Geoponics," 16, i, 9 ff. 

Small head, black eyes, nostrils not con- 
verging, ears erect, neck supple ; mane thick, 
somewhat crinkly, and falling on the right 
side of the neck ; chest broad and muscular, 
shoulders large, forearms straight, belly well- 
rounded, stones small ; seat preferably double, 
otherwise not humped ; tail large and crinkly- 
haired, shanks straight, thighs muscular ; hoof 
of a good contour, and equally solid on all 
sides ; frog small, horn hard. 

PELAGONIUS. 

Pelagonius lived in the last half of the fourth 
century. The translation is from the new edition of 
his " Ars Veterinaria," § 2, by M. Ihm, Leipzig, 1892. 

Small head, black eyes, nostrils open, ears 
short and pricked up ; neck flexible and broad 



Il6 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

without being long ; mane thick and falling on 
the right side ; broad and muscular chest, 
big straight shoulders, muscles sticking out 
all over the body, sides sloping in, double 
back, small belly, stones small and alike, 
flanks broad and drawn in ; tail long and not 
bristly, for this is ugly; legs straight; knee 
round, small, and not turned in ; buttocks 
and thighs full and muscular; hoofs black, 
high, and hollow, topping off with moderate- 
sized coronets. He should in general be so 
formed as to be large, high, well set up, of 
an active look, and round-barrelled in the 
proportion proper to his length. 

PALLADIUS. 

From the "De Re Rustica," 4, 13, 2 ff., written 
probably about the middle of the fourth century. 
Translated from the Latin text of Schneider. 

In a stallion four things are to be tested, — 
his shape, colour, action, and beauty. For 
shape we shall try for a large compact body, 
height to suit his strength, a very long flank, 
big round haunches, breast broad, the surface 
of the body all closely knotted with muscles ; 
foot dry and firm, the horn which forms its 



POINTS OF THE HORSE. II/ 

shoe hollow and pretty high. The points of 
beauty are a small dry head, with scarcely 
anything but mere skin on its bones; ears 
short and mobile, large eyes, wide nostrils, 
neck erect, mane thick, tail even fuller, hoofs 
set on firm and round. In action, let him be 
high-spirited, swift-footed, quivering-limbed 
(a proof of courage), and willing to be 
put to speed from a dead halt and to stop in 
the midst of a fast dash without making 
trouble. The principal colours are chestnut,, 
golden, albino, bay, brown, fawn, yellowish^ 
checkered, dead white, piebald, glistening 
white, black, dark. Of less value and of 
various degrees of beauty, black mixed with 
albino or chestnut, gray with any other colour 
you like ; dappled, spotted, mouse-colour, or 
even duskier. But in the case of stallions,, 
let us pick out a single distinct colour ; others 
are to be disdained unless great merit in 
other ways makes up for defect in colour. 
The same points must be considered in 
brood mares; especially they should have 
long large barrels and bodies. 




NOTES. 

1. (Page 13.) Simon was an Athenian, but we 
do not know exactly when he lived and wrote. 
The story of his criticism of Micon's picture (see 
p. 85) sets the earliest limit (Micon was a con- 
temporary of Polygnotus, who was in Athens about 
460 B.C.), and Xenophon's mention of him the 
latest. Various theories have been propounded, such 
as W. Helbig's, who thought (A, Z. 186 1, p. 180) 
that he was the Simon mentioned in Aristophanes 
(Knights, 242), and that he was Hipparch in 
424 B. c. ; and Gerhard's, who recognized him in 
the figure of a charioteer inscribed with his name 
on a vase (Auserlesene Vasenbilder, iv, taf. 249). 
But the earliest known Greek prose which has sur- 
vived is the tract on the Athenian State, written 
between 424 and 413 b. c. ; and the fragment of 
Simon's work (see p. 107) bears no evidence of 



120 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

being older, and is probably not so old. It is 
likely that it was written at the beginning of the 
fourth century. Xenophon, in speaking of Simon, 
scarcely uses the tone which would have been 
proper in speaking of a very ancient writer. 
Besides the long fragment a few short ones are 
preserved in Pollux. According to Pliny (Nat. 
Hist. 34, 76), a statue of Simon dressed as a 
knight was made by Demetrius (who flourished 
probably in the latter half of the fifth century) ; 
but this may be only a mistaken allusion to the 
statue of the horse mentioned by Xenophon. It 
is supposed by Ernst Curtius (Die Stadtgeschichte 
von Athen, p. 188), who calls Simon a contem- 
porary of Pericles, that this statue was intended 
to embody a perfect representation of the ideal 
horse, just as the famous work by Polycleitus illus- 
trated the proportions of the ideal man ; but this 
is of course a mere theory, unsupported by literary 
evidence. 

2. (Page 13.) The Eleusinion, in Athens, was 
a precinct of Demeter, Kore, and Triptolemus, 
with two temples; it often served as the goal of 
processions, especially cavalry displays. 

3. (Page 14.) This excellent advice stamps Xen- 
ophon at once as a true horseman. Horace, 
though he was no rider, knew the doctrine too; 
witness Sat. i, 2, 86 : — 



NOTES. 121 

" Regibus hie mos est, ubi equos mercantur : opertos 
Inspiciunt, ne si fades, ut saepe, decora 
Molli fulta pede est, emptorem inducat hiantem 
Quod pulchrae dunes, breve quod caput, ardua cervix' 
Hoc illi recta ; " 

which may be rendered, — 

Swells, when they buy horses, have a way of cov- 
ering them up when they look them over, for fear that 
a handsome shape set upon tender feet, as often hap- 
pens, may take in the buyer as he hangs open-mouthed 
over fine haunches, small head, and stately neck. 
And they 're right in it 

4. (Page 14.) Throughout this book it should 
be remembered that the ancients did not shoe 
their horses. The Romans, indeed, used for 
mules the so/ea, a sort of sock of leather com- 
pletely covering the hoof and tied about the 
fetlock, strengthened underneath by a plate of 
iron (Catullus, 17, 26). Nero substituted plates 
of silver (Suetonius, Nero, 30), and his luxurious 
wife, Poppaea, gold (Pliny, Nat. Hist. 33, 140). 
But we do not hear of socks for horses, except 
that in the retreat of the Ten Thousand an Arme- 
nian showed the Greeks how to wrap their horses' 
feet in little bags when travelling through deep 
snow. But of course all this is quite different from 
the modem practice of permanent shoeing. This 
latter is first mentioned in literature in the time 
of the Emperor Justinian, the first half of the 
sixth century (Martin, Les Cavaliers Ath^niens, 



122 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

p. 400) ; but shoes were probably known earlier. 
It is said that one was found in the tomb of King 
Childeric, who died in 460 a. d. There is a cut of 
it, taken from Montfaucon, in Ginzrot, ii, tab. 
86, r. The cut makes it practically identical with 
the modem shoe ; but Beckmann, in his *' History 
of Inventions," justly doubts the trustworthiness 
of the picture. 

5. (Page 15.) The Greek word used by Xeao- 
phon is xcA^cuv, which literally means " swallow ; " 
and the frog was so named from its resemblance 
to the forked tail of the bird. In later Greek we 
find it called /Jarpaxos, "frog" (Geoponics, 16, i, 
9, from Apsyrtus), and in Latin ranula, "little 
frog" (Vegetius, i, 56, 31). The French callit 
fourchette ; the Germans Strahl. It will be observed 
that Xenophon's principle (supported by the other 
writers) of keeping the frog well up from the 
ground, and calling for a high and hollow hoof is 
not always accepted in modem times. 

6. (Page 15.) This remark, and many of the 
works of art show that it was not the custom to 
trim down the fetlocks. In warm climates they do 
not grow very long, and instead of disfiguring the 
foot serve rather to set off its contour. 

7. (Page 16.) The Greek word is Tcpovr], which 
has given much trouble to translators and com- 
mentators. It means literally the pin of a brooch, 



NOTES. 123 

— the Greek brooch being shaped somewhat like 
the modem safety-pin. In the anatomical writers 
it was naturally applied to the small bone in the 
man's arm or leg, — the radius or fibula. In the 
horse, of course, this bone is above what we call 
his " knee ; " and Xenophon, who has not yet 
reached this knee, cannot be thinking of a part 
above it. Hence it has generally been believed 
that he meant a bone in the knee itself, one of 
the astragals. But I believe that Xenophon was 
not thinking of the skeleton, but rather of the 
animal as he looked in the flesh. Indeed he may 
not have understood the anatomy of the horse in 
its relation to man's ; certainly below he speaks of 
the forearm as if it corresponded to the upper 
instead of to the lower arm in man. What, then, 
was more natural than that he should compare the 
back sinew to the small bone of man's leg ? This 
granted, he has described what naturally follows 
when a horse with " gummy " legs (just what he 
has been speaking of) is put to hard work. He 
breaks down, or gives way in the back sinews. 
This explanation seems to have occurred to none 
of the commentators, — not even to Dindorf, 
though he had the advantage of using the frag- 
ment of Simon (see p. 109) in which the word 
irepovYj is used exactly as in Xenophon. I am 
happy to be supported in my view of the passage 
by Dr. Lyman, Dean of the Harvard Veterinary 



124 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

School, to whom I submitted my opinion. After 
reaching it, I found that the same translation of 
the word was used by Stonehenge (see p. 89) . 

8. (Page 16.) I have used the word " forearms " 
for greater clearness. Xenophon calls them 
thighs (fji-qpoC), applying the same word to the 
fore as later to the hind legs. No special horse 
dialect had yet developed ; but the same words, so 
far as possible, were used of horses as of men. 

9. (Page 16.) The lean, dry head with small 
bones, was esteemed the most beautiful ; and this 
point is insisted upon by all the ancient writers 
except Nemesian, who says merely that the head 
should be handsome. 

10. (Page 17.) Xenophon seems to mean the 
*' bars " here. Their fineness was a thing not to be 
seen by the eye, but to be discovered by trial in 
riding, as he says in the third chapter, in his 
remark about the Volte. 

11. (Page i 7.) The reason for this requirement, 
so well recognized for race-horses, is well stated by 
Professor Flower in his admirable little book called 
" The Horse : a Study in Natural History " (p. 142, 
American edition) : " Owing to the great length of 
the soft palate and its relation to the upper end of 
the windpipe, breathing takes place entirely through 
the nose. When men, dogs, and many other ani- 
mals, in consequence of any great exertion, begin 



NOTES. 125 

to pant and require an additional quantity of air to 
that which is ordinarily taken in by the nose, the 
mouth comes to the aid of that channel and is 
widely opened ; but the horse under the same 
circumstances can only expand the margins of the 
nostrils, for which action there is a very efficient 
set of muscles, acting on the cartilaginous frame- 
work which supports them and determines their 
peculiar outline." 

12. (Page 17.) Small ears, set well apart so 
as to leave a large poll, formed the type of 
beauty which gave rise to the name Bucephalus 
(povKi<f>aXo^, " bull-" or *' ox-headed ") . This was 
applied to a valuable breed of Thessalian horses 
(Aristophanes, Frag. 135) long before it was 
given, in a slightly modified form, to Bucephalas, 
the famous charger of Alexander. Examples of 
this type are the bronze head in the Uffizi and 
the famous marble head by Phidias (see frontis- 
piece and plate facing p. S$). 

13. (Page 17.) The idea is that in well-built 
horses, in good condition, the flesh rises on each 
side of the spine so that the latter does not stick 
up like a ridge but lies in a slight depression. 
This quality was of course even more highly appre- 
ciated before the days of saddles than it is now. 
It is mentioned also by Vergil, Columella, Oppian, 
and Apsyrtus. 



126 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

14. (Page i8.) The word used here, vTro/Soo-ts, is 
very vague, and has given rise to various interpre- 
tations. I think it refers to the act of gathering 
in the hind legs in doing the demi-pesade, 
described in the eleventh chapter. 

15. (Page i8.) This fact is noted also by Aris- 
totle (Part. Anim. 4, 10, 12) and Pliny (Nat. 
Hist. II, 260), who state that young quadrupeds 
can reach their heads to scratch them with the 
hind feetj Pliny adds that they cannot graze 
without bending the forelegs. Buifon indepen- 
dently observed these facts. Schlieben (p. S6) 
gives two Arabian methods of estimating what 
will be the height of horses. By the first a cord 
is stretched from the nostril over the ears and 
down along the neck ; this distance is compared 
with that from the withers to the foot; the colt 
will grow as much taller as the first distance 
exceeds the second. By the other method, the 
distance between the knee and the withers is 
compared with that from the knee to the coronet ; 
if it has reached the proportion of two to one, the 
horse will grow no taller. 

16. (Page 20.) See p. 75. 

17. (page 23.) By the word "markers," yvw/xove?, 
Xenophon means the milk-teeth, and he is there- 
fore advising against the purchase of a horse over 
five years old. The times of the shedding of 



NOTES. 127 

these teeth were well understood by the ancients, 
as we know from Aristotle, Hist. Anim. 6, 
22, 12; Varro, Res Rusticae, 2, 7, 2 ; Apsyrtus 
in the "Geoponics," 16, i, 12. What we now 
call the " marks " are of course in the permanent 
teeth ; they are spoken of by Varro, Ibid. 2, 7, 2 ; 
Columella, 6, 29, 4; Apsyrtus, Ibid. 16, i, 12. 
Aristotle sets the average age of horses at from 
eighteen to twenty years ; some, he says, live to 
be twenty-five or thirty; and with great care a 
horse may live to be fifty, though thirty is generally 
the highest limit (Hist. Anim. 6, 22, 8). 

18. (Page 24.) The word here and in chapter 
seven is ^rihr], which properly means " fetter." 
Godfrey Hermann, in his essay on the words which 
the Greeks used to denote the gaits of the horse 
(Comment. Lips. p. 59), has shown that the Volte 
is meant in these passages. 

19. (Page 24.) He seems to mean that if, for 
example, the stable lies to the right, the horse will 
throw his head to the left, and advancing his right 
shoulder, will make a bolt for it. The left rein 
being loose and the right side of the mouth hard, 
the rider will have no control over the animal. 
But the passage is obscurely worded, and has been 
variously interpreted. It may mean " imless they 
are hard-mouthed and also are directed towards 
home." 



128 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

20. (Page 27.) The stable was part of the town- 
house, and was situated on one side of the front 
door. In the country it may have been an out- 
building. 

21. (Page 27.) Aristotle (Oeconomica, i, 6, 4) 
tells of a Persian who was asked, " What is the best 
thing to make a horse plump? " and who answered, 
"His master's eye." 

22. (Page 28.) Barley was the ordinary feed 
for Greek horses. Apsyrtus says that the disease 
was an indigestion coming from eating when out 
of breath after a journey or a run. Among the 
symptoms he mentions that the horse is doubled 
up, cannot bend his legs, and refuses to move, 
throws himself down, and takes his food l)dng. 
A like account is given by Vegetius (Mulomedi- 
cina, 5, 43, i). Aristotle calls the disease incu- 
rable "unless it cures itself" (H. A. 8, 24, 4). 

Besides barley, Greek horses were frequently fed 
on spelt, sometimes on hay ; and wheat is men- 
tioned two or three times by Homer. A mash of 
barley and green herbs was prescribed in cases 
when a mash would now be given. 

23. (Page 28.) Courier tried the experiment, 
and describes it as follows : " A Bari, ville maritime 
de la Pouille pierreuse, on gamit le sol d'une 
^curie construite pour quatre chevaux, d'un lit 
de cailloux pris sur la plage, et arrondis par la 



NOTES. 129 

mer, dont les plus gros pouvaient avoir le volume 
d'un boulet de quatre. Ce lit, de dix-huit pouces 
a peu pres de hauteur sous la mangeoire, qui fut 
exhaussee d'autant, s'abaissait en pente vers le 
mur oppose. Trois chevaux y fiirent places pieds 
nus : 1 'un, poulain de quatre ans, race des envi- 
rons de Cirignola, qui n'avait jamais en de fers; 
I'autre, de huit ans, d'Acquaviva, ferre ordinaire- 
ment de devant ; le troisieme, \ieux cheval de 
troupe. De ces trois chevaux, le premier seule- 
ment avait le sabot bien fait et la come assez 
bonne. On les pansait a I'^curie, d'ou lis ne 
sortaient que pour la promenade ; on mettait sous 
eux la nuit, au lieu de litiere, quelques brins de 
sarment. Leur urine tombant a travers les pierres 
sur le pav6 tres-uni de 1' ^curie, s'^coulait a I'ordi- 
naire avec I'eau qu'on y jetait de temps en temps 
pour nettoyer la place ; de sorte que le cheval 
6tait toujours a. sec. Chaque jour, soir et matin, 
le poulain trottait plusieurs reprises a la longe, sur 
la greve, ou Ton avait amassd des cailloux pareils 
a ceux de I'ecurie. Au bout de deux mois et 
demi, sa come ^tait plus compacte, et la fourchette 
surtout avait acquis une solidity remarquable. II 
fit le voyage de Ban a Tarente passant par 
Monopoli, Ostuni, Brindisi, Lecce, Manduria, tous 
chemins de traverse remplis de pierres, et revint 
sans etre ferrd ni incommode : a la vdrit^ on ne 
Tavait mont^ que deux jours ; mais il aurait r^sist^ 



130 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

a de plus grandes fatigues, et il etait ais4 de voir que 
les memes soins continues I'auraient mis en 6tat 
de se passei de fers toute sa vie ; il fut vendu. Les 
deux autres n'eurent pas le meme succes : leur 
come, gatee par les clous, se fendait et s'exfoliait 
pour peu qu'ils marchassent ; mais peutetre qu'avec 
le temps ils se seraient fait un bon pied. 

" Cette ^preuve eut lieu dans les mois juillet, 
aout et septembre; on ne peut douter qu'elle 
n'eut completement r^ussi sur des chevaux 
calabrais, qui ont meilleur pied que ceux de la 
Pouille.". 

Stalls paved as Xenophon describes are not by 
any means unknown both here and in England. 
The late E. F. Bowditch, Esq., of Framingham, 
was a strong believer in them, though he would 
by no means have approved the hollow hoof de- 
scribed in Xenophon's first chapter. But of 
course his horses were shod, and so shod that 
the frog and heel were very close to the ground. 
His object in using the cobble-stones was to stimu- 
late the growth of those parts, and to keep them 
soft so as to prevent the frog from 'shrivelling. 
This softness of the frog and its contact with the 
ground, he thought, prevented all jar on the foot, 
the frog acting as a buffer. 

24. (Page 29.) The Greek cared for his body 
by bathing and rubbing as well as by the free use 



NOTES. 131 

of oil. Hence Pollux (i, 201) advises rubbing the 
horse's bars with the fingers to make them fine, 
and washing the mouth and lips with warm water 
and anointmg them with oil. 

25. (Page 31.) The muzzle was of thin bronze, 
perforated like a sieve, or of bronze wire or wdcker. 
See cut, p. 34- 

26. (Page 31.) It was the custom among the 
Greeks and Romans to give the horse a roll in 
fine sand after he had exercised. So Pheidippides 
in the "Clouds" of Aristophanes (32), after a 
dream of horse-racing, calls out in his sleep to 
his slave to give the horse a roll and take him 
home. And Isomachus in Xenophon's "Oecono- 
micus" (11, 18) has his slave do the same thing 
after his morning's ride. This Isomachus was a 
fine type of the Athenian of the best period, — 
pure-minded, honourable, and upright. He was a 
lover of the country and a fearless rider ; and the 
following account which he gives Socrates of the 
way in which he was wont to spend his mornings 
makes a delightfiil picture. The translation here 
given was made by Gentien Hervet in 1532. I 
copy from the edition of 1537 (Thomas Berthelet, 
printer, London). 

"I lyse in the mom5mge out of my bed so 

yerly, that if I wold speke with any ma, I shall 

. be sure to fynde him yet within. And if I haue 



132 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

any thynge ado iii the citie, I go about it, & 
take it for a walke. And if I haue no matter of 
great importance to do within the citye, my page 
bryngeth my horse afore in to the fieldes, and so 
I take the way to my groiid for a walke, better 
parauenture, than if I dyd walke in the galeries 
and walking places of the citie. And whan I 
come to my grounde, and if my tenantes be eyther 
sett)nige of trees, or tyllyng or renewyng the 
grounde, or sowyuge, or caryenge of the fruite, I 
beholde howe euerye thynge is done, and caste in 
my m5mde, how I might do it better. And after- 
warde for the moste parte, I gette me a horsebacke 
and ride as nere as I can, as though I were in 
warre constrayned to do the same, wherefore I do 
not spare nother croked wayes, nor noo shroude 
goinges up, no ditches, waters, hedges, nor 
trenches, takynge hede for al that, as nere as can 
be possible, that in this doing, I do not maime 
my horse. And wha I haue thus doone, the page 
leadethe the horse trottynge home agayne, and 
caryeth home with him into the citie, out of the 
cotre that that we haue nede of. And so than I 
get me home againe, somtimes walkyng, and 
sometime runnynge. Than I wasshe my handes, 
and so go to dyner good Soc. the which is or- 
deyned betwene bothe, soo that I abyde all the 
daye nother voyde nor yet to ful." 

Besides the charm of its language, this transla- 



NOTES. 133 

tion is very accurate ; there is in it but one real 
error, for Xenophon does not say that the page 
leads the horse "trotting" home, but that he 
" gives him a roll " and then leads him home. 

27. (Page 31.) Pollux (i, 185) mentions sev- 
eral. The (nrdOT}, which he describes as wooden 
and shaped like a feather, was used for cleaning the 
hair. The word really means " any broad blade ; " 
and this implement is doubtless to be recognized 
on an Assyrian relief from Nimroud, representing 
the stable of Assurnazirpal. Other implements 
were the xfnJKrpa, for combing out, of iron with 
teeth like a saw, corresponding to our curry-comb; 
and the o-oypaKis, which seems to have been a sort 
of mitten of purple cloth, used by the groom in 
rubbing down and to give a gloss to the coat. 

28. (Page 32.) This prescription goes back to 
Homer, II. 23, 280, " a charioteer . . . who on 
their manes full often poured smooth oil, when he 
had washed them with water." The SchoHast on 
these lines says : " This is why Xenophon recom- 
mends the washing of the head and forelock with 
water ; " and he adds the irrelevant but interesting 
information that about a sixth of a pint of oil was 
enough to supple a man's whole body. 

29. (Page 32.) Upon this passage Berenger 
(The History and Art of Horsemanship, by 



134 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Richard Berenger, Gentleman of the Horse to 
His Majesty: London, 1771) has the foUowmg 
interesting note (Vol. I, p. 239) : — 

" These observations are so true and just that one 
could almost think it needless to dwell upon them ; 
yet such is the cruelty and absurdity of our notions 
and customs in 'cropping,' as it is called, the ears 
of our horses, ' docking ' and ' nicking ' their tails, 
that we every day fly in the face of reason, nature, and 
humanity. Nor are the present race of men in this 
island alone to be charged with this folly, almost unbe- 
coming the ignorance and cruelty of savages ; but 
their forefathers^ several centuries ago, were charged 
and reprehended by a public canon for this absurd 
and barbarous practice ; however, we need but look 
into the streets and roads to be convinced that 
their descendants have not degenerated from them; 
although his present Majest5', in his wisdom and 
humanity, has endeavoured to reclaim them, by issu- 
ing an order that the horses which serve in his troops 
should remain as nature designed them : 
' Who never made her work for man to mend.' — Dryden." 

" The title of the canon is, — 

" 19. Ut relzquias riiuufn paganorum quisque 
abjiciat. 

Equos vestros turpi constietudine detruncatiSy nares 
findiiis^ aures copulatis^ veriim etia7n et surdas 
redditis^ caudas amputatis; et quin illos illaesos 
habere potestis, hoc nolentes cnnctis odibiles reddztis. 
Equos etiam plerique in vobis cojnedunt^ quod nullus 
Christianorum in Orientalibus facitj quod etiam 
evitate. 



NOTES. 135 

" From the influence of a vile and unbecoming 
custom, you deform and mutilate your horses, you 
slit their nostrils, tie their ears together, and by so 
doing make them deaf ; besides this you cut off their 
tails ; and when you enjoy them uninjured and perfect, 
you chose rather to maim and blemish them, so as to 
make them odious and disgustful objects to all who 
see them. Numbers of you likewise are accustomed 
to eat your horses, — a practice of which no Christians 
in the East were ever guilty. This also you are 
hereby admonished to renounce entirely." 

This canon was number nineteen among those 
passed at the Council of Calcuith, held in 787 or 
785 A. D. It may be found in Spelman's Councils 
of England, I, p. 293. 

30. (Page 32.) Aristotle, Aelian, Plutarch, and 
Pliny all repeat this strange story. Sophocles 
evidently knew it; I translate from a fragment 
(598) ofhis^Tyro": — 

For my lost locks I mourn, like some young mare 
That rustic drivers catch and hale away 
To where their rude hands in the stables reap 
The golden harvest clean from off her neck. 
They drag her to the mead ; in its clear streams 
Mirrored the semblance of her form she sees, 
Her mane with that foul cropping shorn away. 
Oh, then e'en pitiless might pity her, 
Cowering with shame and like to some mad thing, 
Mourning and weeping for the mane that 's gone. 

On the mane in general, see p. 9 1 ff. 



136 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

31. (Page 35.) Xenophon says '-left;" the 
Greeks had no technical terms like our "near" 
and " off." 

32. (Page 36.) The strap which goes over the 
crest back of the ears. 

33. (Page 36.) The word used by Xenophon 
means properly " net." It is applied to the whole 
upper part of the bridle with its different straps. 
The cheek-straps, the headpiece, with the straps 
running from this, beside ' the ears, to the front, 
and often joining a strap which ran down the 
middle of the face, all formed a sort of network. 

34. (Page 36.) When a leading-rein or halter 
was attached to the bridle (see note 38), this 
caution would not be necessary ; for such a rein 
was fastened to the nose-band or chin-strap, and 
hence, if it had any pull at all on the jaws, it 
pulled on both alike. Xenophon means that in 
the absence of such a halter both the bridle- 
reins must be grasped at once. 

35. (Page 37.) By this method the helper took 
the foot or knee of the rider in his hand, and so 
raised him. It is recommended for the elder men 
in the cavalry by Xenophon in his treatise on the 
"General of Horse," i, 17. It was the privilege 
of Tiribazus, Satrap of Armenia, when he was at 
court, to mount the King of Persia in this fashion 



NOTES. 137 

(Xen. Anab. 4, 4, 4). A special attendant for 
this purpose is said to have accompanied Alexan- 
der in his battles (Arrian, Anab. i, 15, 8). At 
the court of Philip, pages, sons of noblemen, 
performed this duty for the king (Ibid. 4, 13, i). 
Slaves, however, seem to have "made a back;" 
and the Roman Emperor Valerian, when prisoner 
to Sapor, was obliged by that haughty prince to 
mount him in this degradmg fashion, and not to 
offer his hand (Lactantius, " De mortibus perse- 
cutorum," 5). 

36. (Page 37.) By a very neat touch, Xenophon 
fancies himself on the horse's back, speaking to 
him encouragingly. 

37. (Page $S.) Stirrups were unknown till long 
after the Christian era began. Other methods of 
mounting are described in the next chapter ; but 
here we see that horses were sometimes taught to 
stoop or settle down so as to make it easier for the 
rider to reach his place. This was done in two 
wa)rs : (i) by bending the knees, and thus lowering 
the shoulders; (2) by throwing the fore feet for- 
ward and the hind feet back, thus lowering the 
seat, as horses sometimes do naturally when 
tired. The second is the method here spoken 
of by Xenophon, who apph'es to it the word 
vTrof^L^d^ecrOaL. Pollux (1,213) describes it by 
saying that in it the horse set his legs apart, 



138 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

settled in, and lowered himself. A rider about to 
mount by this method is represented on the frieze 
of the Parthenon, and on a vase from Nola (see 
cut on p. 39). That it was employed sometimes 
by Roman soldiers is evident from a relief in 
Clarac, Mus^e des Sculptures, Plate 221. But it is 
not referred to elsewhere in Greek literature. 
Courier had seen this method in use in Germany, 
and Jacobs says that it was introduced thither 
from England ( ! ) and called St?'ecken. Alexan- 
der's horse Bucephalas was taught the first method, 
— that of bending the knees (^Curtius, 6, 5, 18). 
This method is represented on a black-figured 
vase in the Hermitage collection (see cut on 
p. 30). The Greek word in this case is oKXa^av. 

38. (Page 39.) From this it appears that a 
strap or cord, entirely distinct from the reins, was 
attached to the bridle, doubtless to be used in 
leading as well as in mounting. (See note 34.) It 
may be seen in the cuts on pp. 34, 39, and 29, in 
which it is attached to the chin-strap. On a vase- 
painting in Gerhard (Auserlesene Vasenbilder, iv, 
293, 294, i) it is attached to the nose-band. A 
leading-rein just like the Greek is to be seen in 
Assyrian reliefs. 

39. (Page 39.) As Greek bits had no branches, 
the chin-strap was not the equivalent of our curb- 
chain, and no leverage came from pulling on it 



NOTES. 139 

It merely kept the bit in place and the mouth- 
piece from slipping through, and would cause no 
pain if pulled down by the halter. The nose- band 
was of leather or metal. On the bits, see note 53. 

40. (Page 39.) The Roman soldier referred to 
in note 37 has his hand here. This remark of 
Xenophon's throws light on the height of the 
Greek cavalry horse. (See p. 95.) Mounting- 
blocks were often used. There are several on 
the frieze of the Parthenon, and one on the 
Gjolbaschi Heroon (Taf. 23, b. 2). They were 
placed at convenient intervals along the streets 
in Rome by Gaius Gracchus (Plutarch, 7, 2). 

41. (Page 39.) In this method of mounting, 
the spear must have been used much as we use a 
vaulting- pole (but of course with only one hand) . 
It is absurd to suppose that there was a little pro- 
jection or crossbar towards the butt of the spear, 
which served as a step in mounting. The athletic 
Greek would have scorned such a thing. A gem 
in the Stosch collection, supposed to represent a 
warrior mounting in that fashion, is capable of a 
different interpretation ; and the spears in Stuart 
and Revett (Antiquities of Athens, iii, p. 47) have 
nothing on them but the common thong to help 
in hurling. Yet the crossbar theory has found 
credence with Ginzrot, Berenger, Winckelmann, 
Jacobs, Schlieben, and Martin, as well as with all 



I40 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the commentators on Xenophon's work except 
Courier, who will have none of it. He describes 
the way in which the PoUsh and Austrian lancers 
of his day, as well as the Cossacks, were in the 
habit of mounting ; and doubtless this is very like 
what Xenophon meant : " lis saisissent de la main 
gauche les renes et une poign6e de crins, et 
s'appuyant de la droite sur la pique, un peu 
penchee vers la croupe du cheval, ils s'enl^vent 
tout d'un temps, en mettant la pied a I'^trier, et le 
cavalier se trouve en selle la lance en main." 

42. (Page 41.) The Greeks had no saddles with 
trees, nor the Romans until the fourth century, 
so far as can be judged from works of art. They 
rode either bareback or upon a cloth which was 
fastened by a girth under the belly or about the 
breast of the horse. In works of art the girths are 
often omitted. 

43. (Page 42.) This statement seems to be 
exactly the reverse of the truth ; for the horse in 
starting to canter turns himself slightly across his 
line of progress, in order to enable him to lead 
with that leg which is advanced by this turn. 
Hence to lead with the left, he turns his head to 
the right and his croup to the left. Accordingly 
there has been much discussion of this passage in 
Xenophon, and various emendations of the text 
have been proposed by modem editors. Her- 



NOTES. 141 

mann, after various attempts, practically gives the 
passage up ; and so far no satisfactory explanation 
or emendation has been offered. I have endeav- 
oured to translate the Greek exactly as I found 
it. If the Greek text is as Xenophon wrote it, I 
cheerfully admit that any absurdity in the trans- 
lation is due to my own misunderstanding of the 
Greek rather than to any ignorance on the part 
of Xenophon. It should also be observed that 
the lead recommended (with the left) is not the 
favourite lead to-day. 

The walk, trot, and gallop are the only gaits 
mentioned in Greek authors. The amble or pace 
was certainly unknown to them until after the time 
of Aristotle, who says (Trcpt ^(owv Tropcuis, 14) that 
if a horse moves the two legs on the same side at 
the same time, he must fall. Still it will be observed 
that on the Orvieto vase (see cut facing p. 76) the 
horses are all moving in this manner. But as 
Korte shows (A. Z. 1880, p. 181), this had be- 
come the conventionalized manner of representing 
the motion of the horse. It is found in Assyrian 
and Egyptian art, and from thence passed to the 
Phoenician and the archaic Greek, where it is the 
regular rule, although some exceptions are found. 
It appears on coins down to the best period, and 
on red-figured vases of the more severe type. It 
was, therefore, not intended to represent a natural 
gait in the animal. Pliny (N. H. 8, 166) men- 



142 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

tions a Spanish breed of horses whose natural gait 
was the amble, and adds that this led to the belief 
that the trot was in all breeds an acquired gait. 

44. (Page 46.) The Greek spur had no rowels, 
but was merely a small goad fastened to the heel 
by straps which passed over the instep and under 
the sole. Such spurs have been found in Olympia 
and in Magna Graecia, and are represented in 
vase-paintings. A book on the development of 
the spur, with many beautiful plates, is " Der Spom 
in seiner Formen-entwicklung," Zchille und Forrer, 
Berlin, 1891. 

45. (Page 47.) The Odrysians were a Thracian 
tribe, whose power, once extending from the Stry- 
mon to Abdera, declined at the end of the fifth 
century b. c. 

46. (Page 47.) This seems at first sight a device 
•entirely unworthy of a horseman, and Berenger 
strongly condemns it ; but it is evident, from what 
follows, that Xenophon's intention was not to 
recommend one to support himself by the mane, 
but to prevent the beginner (this book was written 
for " the younger of his friends ") from disturbing 
the horse in his leap by jerking at the bit. The 
context shows that it was with the bridle-hand 

(thus kept motionless) that the mane was to be 
grasped. The expression " it is not a bad thing " 
is probably purposely selected; and Xenophon 



NOTES. 143 

does not here say, as usual in this book, **it is 
well." Of course a practised rider would need 
no such help as the mane to keep his hand quiet. 
On the frieze of the Parthenon the rider who has 
his right hand on his horse's head is merely sooth- 
ing the excited animal (see cut facing p. 89). 

47. (Page 48.) As Jacobs observes, the rule is 
a good one, but the reason given for it (and 
repeated by Pollux, i, 206) seems to be exactly 
the reverse of the truth. The horse, as a rule, pre- 
fers familiar places, and after constant riding over 
one road it will be found very difficult to make 
him go elsewhere. 

48. (Page 48.) For instance, on Xenophon's 
estate in Scillus they hunted deer, wild boars, and 
gazelles ; among other animals, hares, bears, and 
wolves are frequently mentioned as hunted in 
Greece. The hunt was one of the principal 
amusements of both Greeks and Romans, as it 
had been of earlier nations. Much information 
on the subject will be found in Xenophon's 
" Cynegeticus," though the work treats chiefly of 
dogs and hounds, and in the treatise of the same 
name by Arrian. 

49. (Page 52.) The words in brackets are, as 
Cobet pointed out, a stupid interpolation, adding 
nothing to what has been said already. 



144 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

50. (Page 53.) On the bits see note 53. 

51. (Page 54.) "Chirrup" is here used, for 
want of a better word, to translate TroTnrrcr/xo?, a 
noise made by the Ups alone. It is used of a 
kiss (Anthologia Palatina, v, 245 and 285), and 
therefore does not mean " whistUng," as it is gen- 
erally translated here. The sound is familiar to 
every rider, but we use it now to start a horse. 
By "clucking," KXooyjao?, is meant the sound 
made by the tongue against the roof of the 
mouth. 

52. (Page 54.) This advice looks as though 
Xenophon were hurried, or as if a lazy horse were 
too distasteful a subject for him to treat. He 
could not have meant it to be followed to the 
letter. 

53. (Page 56.) There is no evidence for a 
curb-chain on a Greek bit, and hence Greek bits 
had no leverage. The reins in every case acted 
directly on the mouthpiece of the bit. Nor do 
we hear of two bits used at the same time, nor of 
two sets of reins. In this passage Xenophon 
recommends two kinds of bits, — the smooth and 
the rough; but it is evident from his language 
that these were not the only kinds used in his day. 
Here, however, I am concerned only with these 
two. What constituted the smoothness of the one 
and the roughness of the other? Certainly not 



NOTES. 145 

the discs (rpoxot) ; for they were used on both 
kinds, and were actually smaller on the rough than 
on the smooth. Evidently, therefore, the differ- 
ence lay in the nature of the '' echini ; " this word, 
the plural of " echinus," I have felt it necessary to 
transfer from the Greek bodily, for we have none 
in English which will exactly express its meaning 
here. The word in Greek, cxtvo?, means " sea- 
urchin ; " therefore the contrivance upon the 
mouthpiece of the bit was probably round, and 
had on its edges prickly spines, such as we see 
on the edges of the sea-urchin's shell. In the 
rough bit these spines were sharp ; Xenophon's 
language suggests that there were echini on the 
smooth bit, but that their spines in this case were 
not sharp. Fortunately, light is thrown on this 
subject by a bit which has actually come down ta 
us from antiquity. This bit (see cut, p. 50) was 
found on the Acropolis of Athens in 1SS8, when 
the wall and other. works of Cimon were in course 
of excavation. It lay among the debris used as 
filling at the time of these works. The bit is 
therefore very old, dating back nearly, if not quite, 
to the time of the Persian wars, 490-479 B.C. I 
take the picture, with part of my description, from 
an article by Lechat in the " Bulletin de Cor- 
respondance Hell^nique," 1890, p. 385. The 
mouthpiece is jointed, and the reins were attached 
to the large rings at each end. What appear to 

10 



146 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

be branches are not like the branches of our curb- 
bits; for they did not serve to support a curb- 
chain, nor was a rein attached to them. They 
were fastened to the cheek-pieces of the bridle, 
and merely kept the mouth-piece in place. Each 
cheek-piece divided into two straps, just before 
reaching the bit, to which they were attached 
at the two small holes in each branch. This 
arrangement for attaching the bit was a very old 
one; it may be seen on many Assyrian reliefs 
(see cut facing p. 145) and on some Greek vases 
(see cuts on pp. 20, 23, 27, 39).* See also the 
Dodona statuette, p. 44. These pictures show 
that the branches lay close against the sides of the 
mouth ; in the picture of the Acropolis bit (and in 
that of the Carapanos bit below) the perspective is 
misleading. It is evident that no leverage was 
to be had from such branches. We cannot tell 
whether the bit which Xenophon had in mind 
was attached in this way or not ; he himself says 
nothing, and such branches are altogether wanting 

* On this subject, see an article in the " Revue 
Archeologique," 1888, p. 52, where it is shown that a 
prehistoric bit found in Switzerland and one found in 
the Caucasus region were attached in the same way 
as above described. The latter almost exactly re- 
sembles the Acropolis bit ; the former has no echini, 
but is a mere twisted snaffle. In treating the bit, I 
do not think it safe to use the illustrations given in 
Montfaucon or in Jacobs. 



NOTES. 147 

in many works of art. But to return to the 
echini. Each part of the mouthpiece of the 
Acropolis bit has little spines on it; but these 
spines are rounded and not sharp. Further, to 
judge from Lechat's description, they rise directly 
from the mouthpiece itself, and not from a cylin- 
der put on about the mouthpiece. But we know 
that the echini were not always actually part of 
the mouthpiece ; we might infer that they were 
not, from Xenophon's remark about "all the 
parts put on round the joints;" and this infer- 
ence is made certain by the construction of 
another ancient bit (cut on p. 60). This bit, 
also described by Lechat, is in the Carapanos 
collection of bronzes ; but unfortunately its coun- 
try of origin and its age are unknown. Like 
the other, it is jointed ; but each half of the mouth- 
piece forms an axis about which play an echinus 
and a large disc, the latter being biconvex like a 
lens. The spines of the echini are very sharp.- 
The discs are evidently what Xenophon calls the 
Tpoxot. But in this bit we have a combination 
which he does not recommend ; that is, we have 
"good-sized" discs, whereas he says that with 
sharp echini the discs should be heavy, but not 
so high as they are when used on the smooth bits. 
It is inconceivable, however, that the discs should 
ever have been higher than these. This bit was 
attached to the cheek-pieces by the small rings on 



148 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the branches ; the reins were fastened to the large 
hooks which play about the axes of the mouth- 
piece. The branches are very large ; I know of 
only one parallel for them in art, on a vase pub- 
lished in the "Journal of Hellenic Studies," 1890, 
plate 2, fig. 6, and possibly on the coin in the cut 
on p. 26. 

Now, it is clear that neither of these bits corre- 
sponds exactly to Xenophon's description. But 
from them I have, I believe, got a clearer idea of 
what he meant than is to be had from any of the 
commentators on his book. The horse, we gather 
from Xenophon, was to be trained on the rough 
bit ; hence the discs were low and heavy, probably 
like the rollers used on some modern curb-bits. 
The sharp echini acted on the "bars" of the 
horse if he attempted to seize the bit. When he 
had been taught his lesson, the smooth bit was 
substituted. Here the echini were rounded, 
so that they merely suggested punishment without 
really inflicting it. But to prevent him from 
getting so used to the smooth bit as not to mind 
it, large discs were put on, " to make him keep his 
jaws apart and drop the bit." These discs were 
between the bars and the tongue, on each side; 
and, these once understood, we see why the horse 
is represented with his mouth open in nearly all 
Greek works of art. 

Xenophon does not recognize a bit consisting of 



NOTES. 149 

a single piece of metal (though the Greeks may- 
have had such bits), but always speaks of one that 
is jointed. His expression, "stiff bit," therefore, 
applies to one in which the parts — the joints, 
discs, and echini — do not play easily about 
each other, either from rust, or because the parts 
are too tight. 

That numerous other kinds of bits, and varia- 
tions upon these two kinds, were known to the 
ancients, is evident from the classical writers, from 
Pollux, and from works of art. For example, the 
modern roller-bit is found in the mouth of Alexan- 
der's horse (cut on p. 69), if one may trust the 
large engraving in the "Bronzi di Ercolano," ii, 
p. 339. There are also in the Naples Museum 
a number of bits, of which I have seen photo- 
graphs. None of them exactly resemble the bit 
described by Xenophon, though several approach 
it in details. The whole subject is a good field 
for closer investigation, and little confidence can 
be placed in the statements found in the ordinary 
books on antiquities. 

54. (Page 58.) The device of hanging little 
rings from the middle of the bit is familiar in 
modern times. 

55. (Page 61.) As, for instance, in the Pana- 
thenaic festival. The frieze of the Parthenon 
represents the parade on this occasion. A com- 



150 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

ment by Beule will be found interesting here 
(L'Acropole d'Athenes, 2, p. 160) : "La troupe 
s'avance au galop, par un mouvement pie in 
d'ensemble, mais d'une allure retenue et qui n'a 
rien d'imp^tueux. Les chevaux semblent galoper 
sur place, ou plutot se cabrer gracieusement. 
Si Ton veut une description du cheval du Parthe- 
non, qu'on lise le onzieme chapitre du traits 
d'equitation. Le type id^al que cherche X6no- 
phon, Phidias I'a constamment copi6. La race 
thessalienne offre encore aujourd'hui une certaine 
ressemblance avec les bas-reliefs de la frise." 

56. (Page 62.) That is, of course, when the fore- 
legs are raised in the movement described in the 
next sentence, the " demi-pesade." By " loin " 
here he means the hollow on each side below the 
ribs, — the flanks. 

57. (Page 63.) Xenophon refers to the phy larch 
and hipparch, respectively. See p. 75. 

58. (Page 64.) See cut on p. 61. 

59. (Page 65.) The cuirass ordinarily consisted 
of two metal plates made to fit the body, one pro- 
tecting the breast and abdomen, and the other 
the back. They were hinged on one side, and 
buckled on the other. They were further kept in 
place by leathern straps or bands of metal, passing 
over the shoulders from behind and fastened in 



NOTES. 151 

front and by the belt. About the lower part of 
the cuirass was a series of flaps of leather or felt, 
covered with metal, but flexible, protecting the 
hips and groin without interfering with freedom of 
movement (see cuts on pp. 19 and 69). There 
were also similar flaps at the right shoulder to 
protect the part of the body which was left 
exposed when the arm was raised to hurl the 
javelin or to strike with the sword. But even 
in the time of Xenophon, a sort of scale armour 
was not unknown, the metallic scales being fas- 
tened to a cuirass of felt. On the frieze of the 
Parthenon one of the riders wears a combina- 
tion of plate and scale armour, the breast and 
back being covered by plates which are joined 
at the sides by scale armour. Of course all parts 
of the cuirass were often elaborately ornamented. 
Xenophon's insistence on the point that the 
cuirass should be made to fit the individual 
reminds one of the conversation reported by him 
in the "Memorabilia" (3, 10, 9 ff.) between. 
Socrates and a cuirass- maker. 

60. (Page 65.) The neck-piece is rarely seea 
in art, but is found on certain reliefs from Perga- 
raon (Altertiimer von Pergamon, ii, 43, 44, 2, and 
47, 2). It comes up between the shoulder-straps,, 
and is at the back of the neck, not at the front. 
So in the statuette of the Etruscan warrior, called 
the Mars of Todi ; see Baumeister, taf. Ixxxix. 



152 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

But a cuirass with the neck-piece extending all 
the way round has been found at Grenoble 
(Baumeister, p. 2044), and is represented on the 
coin which serves as the tail- piece to Chapter I 
(p. 19). It is probable that this piece was an 
Eastern device, suggested to Xenophon during his 
campaign in Persia, and not generally adopted in 
Greece. 

61. (Page 66.) It is impossible to say what 
Xenophon meant by a Boeotian helmet. There 
were two principal types of Greek helmets, — the 
Corinthian and the Attic, to be seen on the head 
of Athene on the coins of Corinth and Athens 
respectively. The Corinthian, having a nose-piece 
and immovable cheek-pieces, was the more com- 
plete protection. The Athenian generally had 
cheek-pieces, always movable, however, so that 
they could be turned up, leaving the face free. 
These do not always appear on the coins. Both 
helmets protected the nape of the neck. But as 
Xenophon has provided for the protection of the 
throat by a special piece rising from the cuirass, 
he can scarcely mean the Corinthian helmet which 
covers this part pretty effectually ; and his descrip- 
tion would conform even less closely to the Attic 
type. 

62. (Page 66.) Examples (but not of Greek 
origin) of this flexible piece of armour have been 



NOTES. 153 

found at Olympia and at Pergamon (Curtius and 
Adier, Olympia, tafelband iv; Altertumer von 
Pergamon, ii, taf. 43). It was made of strips of 
metal, lapping over each other Hke the fingers 
of a mediaeval gauntlet. See also Baumeister, 
Denkmaler, p. 2028. 

63. (Page 66.) Greaves were made of elastic 
metal, lined with felt or leather, and were snapped 
about the leg below the knee and then fastened 
behind with straps or buckles. Such a piece is 
here recommended to fit the right arm ; and on the 
analogy of the leg-greave I suppose that it was 
intended for the part of the arm below the elbow. 

64. (Page 67.) That is, the part near the 
shoulder and the armpit ; this is left unprotected 
by the unfolding of the flaps mentioned above. 

65. (Page 67.) The armour here prescribed for 
the horse is not Greek, but Oriental. We find no 
evidence of its use in Greece in the art or litera- 
ture of the fifth century. Xenophon, doubtless, 
became acquainted with it during the Expedition 
of the Ten Thousand, approved it and desired its 
introduction into Greece. It was introduced to a 
limited extent in the fourth century. But there is 
nothing in art to explain how the thigh-amiour of 
the horse protected the rider's legs. 

66. (Page 67.) Here the Greek word is Ittoxov; 
but just before and in chapter seven (see note 42) 



154 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

the usual word for the cloth, k(^LTnnov^ is used. It 
is not certain what the difference was bet^veen the 
two ; but probably, as Schheben thinks, the hroxov 
was more extensive ; and was padded or quilted 
(see the great Pompeian mosaic of the battle of 
Issus) ; perhaps it was continued under the belly. 

67. (Page 67.) Such boots may be seen on the 
frieze of the Parthenon and on the Orvieto vase 
(cut facing p. 76). 

68. (Page 67.) The words "sword," "sabre," and 
" scimitar " are used only as approximations here. 
The Greek swords of all sorts were much shorter 
than ours; and the two latter forms resembled 
curved butcher's- knives rather than swords, in our 
sense of the word. 

69. (Page 68.) See the Orvieto vase (cut facing 
p. 76). 

70. (Page eZ.) The " Hipparchicus," or "Cav- 
alry General; " see p. 71. 

71. (Page 74.) There are only three passages, 
and two of them (Iliad, 15, 679; Odyssey, 5, 
371) are in similes ; hence they may and doubt- 
less do refer, not to the heroic period in which 
the scene of the poem was laid, but to the later 
time when the verses were written. The third is 



NOTES. 155 

the only passage in which heroes are actually 
described as riding on horseback (Iliad, 10, 513) ; 
but this is in the Dolopeia, universally admitted 
to be the latest part of the Iliad in order of 
composition. It cannot, therefore, be accepted 
as evidence in the face of the general practice of 
driving, found everywhere else in heroic scenes. 

As my book is concerned only with the later 
practice of riding, there is no need to discuss the 
very obscure question of the introduction of the 
horse into Greece, shadowed forth as it may or 
may not have been by the myths of Pegasus, the 
Centaurs, Erechtheus, and Poseidon. According 
to Pietr^ment (whom I quote at second-hand, 
having never seen his book, as I remarked in my 
preface), no fossil remains of horses have been 
found in Greece ; and the animal was certainly 
introduced thither, though the route is unknown. 

72. (Page 76.) The price of the horse branded 
with the letter Koppa, in Aristophanes' " Clouds," 
20. The exact significance of this and other 
brands is unknown, save that horses thus branded 
were of more than ordinary value. See cut on 
p. 184, and its description. 

73. (Page 84.) See Pliny, N. H. 35, 95 ; Aelian, 
V. H. 2, 3. 

74. (Page 85.) Pseudo-Lucian, Dem. Encom., 
24; Aelian, V. H. 14, 15. 



I $6 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

75. (Page 85.) Aelian, H. A. 4, 50; Pollux, 
2, 69. 

76. (Page 87.) The description by Vegetius 
(fifth century) in the " Mulomedicina," 4, 6 (6, 6) 
is of a particular breed, and that not a Greek one. 
Isidorus, Origines, 12, i, 45 (seventh century), 
and Pollux, i, 188 ff. (second century) are mere 
compilers, adding nothing in this matter to the 
knowledge which we have from other sources. 

77. (Page 93.) Light may come from another 
direction. We find now and then that the manes 
of horses were shorn as a sign of mourning. This 
was done by Persians on the death of Mardonius 
(PIdt. 9, 24), and by Greeks on the deaths of 
Pelopidas and Hephaestion (Plutarch, Pelopidas, 
33 ; Alexander, 72). In the Alcestis of Euripides, 
428 ff., the bereaved husband orders all his subjects 
to shear the manes of their horses. 

78. (Page 94.) Not a Homeric fashion, however, 
(see e.g. Iliad, 17, 439). It was intermediate 
between the Heroic and the Classical Age. 

79. (Page 98.) See Pliny, N. H. 8, 156 f. 

80. (Page 99.) The horse Xanthus and his mate 
wept for the death of Patroclus ; but their grief 
was not appreciated by the charioteer Automedon 
(Iliad, 17, 426 ff.). 



NOTES. 



157 



81. (Page ioi.) Our information comes from 
Plutarch, Life of Alexander, 6 ; 32; 61; 
Morals, p. 970 D; Arrian, Anabasis, 5, 14, 4; 
19, 4 ff . ; Strabo, p. 698; Gellius, 5, 2; Geopo- 
nics, 16, 2; Curtius, 6, 5, 18; 9, 3, 23; Pliny, 
N. H. 8, 154 ; Aelian, V. H. 2, 3. 

82. (Page ioi.) See Aristophanes, frag. 41, 
Kock. 





ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 



IN making selections from the antique for the 
pictures in this book, I have been guided, not 
so much by the interest or beauty of the originals, 
considered as works of art, as by their usefulness 
in explaining or illustrating the various subjects 
which have been treated in the foregoing pages. 
So, too, the following brief notes are not written 
from the point of view of the art-critic, an office 
to which I do not pretend ; but in them I have 
given the immediate source from which each illus- 
tration is taken, the museum or collection in 
which the object itself is to be seen to-day, and, 
wherever possible, the time of its production, and 
the place where it was found. I have mentioned. 



l6o XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

also, the points in each work which led me to 
choose it for the purposes of this book. Without 
too great presumption I may venture to remark 
that but few, if any, of the Classics, except Homer, 
have been thus closely and fully illustrated from 
ancient art. The present attempt may serve to 
show what an opportunity there is in this direction. 

FULI^PAGE ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Frontispiece. Bronze head in the Uffizi, Flor- 
ence, No. 426 of the bronzes in the collection in 
that gallery. From a photograph. The work was 
found near Civita Vecchia, and was sent from 
Rome to Florence in 1585, according to the 
catalogue of the Uffizi gallery. The time of its 
production is unknown. Originally there was a 
bridle on the head; the mouthpiece of the bit 
still remains. This head has the ears wide apart, 
leaving the poll large (see p. 17) ; and it therefore 
illustrates the type of beauty which gave rise to 
the term povKccfxiko? (see note 12. p. 125). 

Page 17. From the frieze of the Parthenon, a 
work completed about 440 b. c. under the direc- 
tion of Phidias (see pp. 84 and 97). From a 
photograph in "Masterpieces of Antique Art," by 
S. Thompson. Although this slab is not in as 
perfect a state of preservation as are some of the 
others, yet it has always been among the most 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. l6l 

admired for the grace, action, and truth to nature 
of its figures. The horses seem to illustrate exactly 
the type preferred by Xenophon in his first chapter 
(see also p. 89). For the costume of the riders 
see the remarks on p. 163. 

Page 41. Fragment of a sixth-century monu- 
ment in honour of an Athenian warrior of a time 
much earlier than the Persian wars. From " Die 
Attischen Grabreliefs," Conze, i, taf 9. The 
original is in the Barracco collection in Rome ; 
Conze took his engraving from a cast in Stras- 
burg. The complete work was a tall, narrow stele, 
like the well-known stele of Aristion. On the 
upper part was represented the dead man, armed 
probably as a hoplite ; only his feet and the butt 
of his spear remain. Below, in what is called the 
KprjTrii of the monument, is a young horseman, 
holding the reins in his left hand and in his right 
two javelins ; he is armed also with a short, 
straight sword. It should be remembered that 
the two reins are often represented on the same 
side in early art, so that this relief does not prove 
the existence of two sets of reins (see note 53, 
p. 144). The reins must be supposed to be 
attached directly to the bit; there is here no- 
representation of branches, but such details are 
often neglected in art. This rider, however, 
carries two javelins ; and yet Xenophon in his 
twelfth chapter (p. 6S) speaks as if he were 

II 



1 62 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

recommending something entirely new in suggest- 
ing the use of two javelins instead of one spear. 
But the technique of this work shows that the 
rider is of a time long before Xenophon ; further, 
on a number of early vase-paintings (see for 
instance pp. 30 and 65), two javelins are carried 
by cavaliers. I am not aware that any explana- 
tion has been offered of this apparent contradic- 
tion. When it is remembered, however, that the 
Athenians had no regularly organized body of 
cavalry before the Persian wars (see p. 75), it 
may be thought that after the organization of the 
force it was armed merely with one spear; and 
that in the transition state before this organization, 
hoplites, when mounted for some special purpose, 
carried two. Thus, the present monument may 
have represented the dead warrior serving in two 
capacities, — on foot and as a mounted hoplite. 
It is true that the rider in the Lamptrae rehef 
(facing p. 68) carries but one spear ; and so the 
custom probably varied before the knights were 
organized. 

Page 68. Part of a fragment of a monument 
found in the Attic deme of Lamptrae, and now in 
Athens. From the " Mittheilungen des deutschen 
arch. Instituts in Athen," xii, taf. 2. A work of 
perhaps a little after the middle of the sixth 
century. See the remarks just above, and note 
that the regular Athenian cavalry did not carry 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 63 

shields. The rider wears the usual short mantle. 
The horse is a much better animal than the one 
represented in the plate just treated ; on his gait 
see p. 141. Another horse is led at the left 
as the outlines show. This is not uncommon 
in art. 

Page 76. From an Attic cylix, or cup, found at 
Orvieto, in Central Italy, described and illustrated 
by G. Korte in the " Archaologische Zeitung," 
1880, taf. 15. It is now in the Berlin Museum. 
The picture represents the examination for admis- 
sion to the Athenian cavalry, the 8oKt/>tcuna (see 
p. 76). At the left, just below the handle of the 
cup, is a bearded man seated under a tree, with a 
stylus and a writing-tablet in his hands. In front 
of him stands a man with a long staff (the cup is 
here broken). Towards them are approaching 
three young men, dressed alike, not in armour, but 
in the usual gala or parade costume of the cavalry, 
— a chlamys, or short cloak, buckled at the 
shoulder j a petasus, or broad- brimmed hat ; and 
KodopvoL, or high riding-boots (actually, the artist 
has represented these boots only in the case of the 
second rider). Each brings up his horse by a 
leading-rein (see note 38, p. 138), not by the 
bridle (see note 34, p. 136) ; the bridles in fact 
are here left to the imagination, and the leading- 
rein is supposed to be attached to the chin-strap 
or nose-band. In the cut on p. 39 the bridle-rein 



1 64 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

and the leading-rein are distinguished, the thick 
dark streak representing the latter. The horses, 
Korte thinks, are not represented in a natural 
gait (see p. 141) ; yet perhaps not much evidence 
on this point can be got from a representation 
of horses moving at a walk (see p. 163). Each 
man carries two javelins (see p. 162). The horses 
have long tails, long forelocks (see p. 32), and 
hogged manes (see p. 93). Behind the first 
horse stands a young man (also under a tree), 
with a peculiar staff having a crook at the upper 
end. This man may be the hipparch or the 
phylarch (see p. 75) of the troop undergoing 
examination, for we know that young men were 
chosen to these offices. Finally, behind the 
third horse stands a bearded man with a staff of 
office. The two upright bearded men are doubt- 
less the examining committee of the Senate ; the 
seated man is their secretary. The first knight is 
actually in course of examination, as his upright 
and attentive position shows; the second is on his 
way, the third just starting. The newly discovered 
treatise of Aristotle on the Athenian Constitution 
gives us some interesting and in part new informa- 
tion about this examination (chap. 49). In the 
centre of the bottom of the cup is one of the two 
hundred mounted bowmen, called the Scythians, 
employed by the Athenians as a sort of police 
force. 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 165 

Page 83. Head of one of the horses of Selene, 
the moon goddess, from the eastern pediment of 
the Parthenon, now in the British Museum. From 
a photograph in Brunn's " Denkmaler Griechischer 
und Romischer Skulptur," lief. 38. On the eyes, 
see p. 83 ; on the mane, p. 95 ; and on the Bu- 
cephalus type of the head, p. 125. 

Page 89. From the frieze of the Parthenon, as 
engraved in "Ancient Marbles in the British 
Museum," viii, pi. 18, and edited by Hawkins. 
This group affords a most perfect idea of the type 
of horse approved by Xenophon (see p. 89). I 
have remarked, at the end of note 46 (p. 143), 
upon the soothing gesture of the second rider; 
every foot of his horse is raised from the ground. 
The third rider is one of the few on the frieze that 
wear the cuirass (note 59, p. 150) ; he has also a 
helmet of the Attic type with folding cheek-pieces 
(note 61, p. 152), and wears boots (p. 67). But 
the fifth rider and horse are the best of all; I 
quote Hawkins here: "Nothing can exceed the 
vigour, the life, the animation which pervades the 
whole horse, bounding from the earth with 
the very exuberance of animal spirits; the mus- 
cular power and elasticity with which he springs 
from the ground is admirably expressed, as are 
also the playful pawings of the forelegs and the 
animated expression of lively impatience in the 
muscles and positions of the head and neck. Nor 



l66 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

less to be admired are the form and character of 
the rider, the easy firmness of his seat, the 
perfect confidence in his own powers of com- 
mand, his entire composure and tranquillity con- 
trasted with the sudden and vehement action of 
the animal beneath him; and the grace and 
precision with which the whole framework of 
his body is indicated, and the muscular action 
developed." 

Page 109. The monument of Dexileus, an 
Athenian knight, who was born, as the inscription 
shows, in 414 b. c, and who fell in battle near 
Corinth in 394. His youth may show that this 
was his first and last campaign. This monument 
is still /« situ in the Street of Tombs, outside the 
Dipylon gate of Athens ; near it are the stelae of 
others of the family of Dexileus. He is in the act 
of slaying a foeman. For the purposes of artistic 
effect he is not in armour. His weapon, whether 
sword or spear, and the bridle of his horse were 
doubtless added in bronze. From a photograph 
in my possession ; the shadow at the left is caused 
by a wooden casing, set about the monument to 
preserve it. In the reproduction this casing is 
happily omitted. 

Page 145. Assurbanipal (Sardanapalus) , King 
of Assyria from 668 to 626 b. c, hunting wild 
asses. From a photograph of the alabaster relief 
found at Kouyunjik, Nineveh, now in the British 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 6/ 

Museum. I have chosen this picture merely to 
illustrate the way in which the rein was attached 
to the bit, and the bridle to the branches (see 
p. 146). In the relief itself (though not in this 
reproduction) it is perfectly clear that the rein 
was fastened to the littie ring. 

ILLUSTRATIONS IN THE TEXT. 

Page 13. From Panofka's " Bilder Antiker 
Lebens," iii, i ; he took it from Tischbein, " Vas 
d'Hamilton," i, 47. The painting represents the 
end of a race ; the pillar indicating the goal. On 
the attachment of the bits, see p. 146. I have 
grave doubts about the trustworthiness of this 
picture, but insert it for its life and action. It 
must, if a correct reproduction, be a late work. 

Page 19. Coin of King Patraos of Paeonia, 
340-315 B. c. From a cut in " An Illustrated 
Dictionary to the Anabasis" by Professor J. W» 
White and the present writer, who took it from 
Baumeister, p. 2030. It is also illustrated and 
described by Imhoof-Blumer, " Monnaies Grecs," 
taf. c. The horseman, who is a Paeonian, wears 
trousers, and has an extremely large crest to his 
helmet. From his cuirass seems to rise the neck- 
piece (note 60, p. 151) ; note also the flaps about 
his loins (p. 66). The inscription above gives the 
king's name. 



1 68 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Page 20. Painting on an Attic vase now in 
Munich, found in the ancient Etruscan city of 
Vulci. From the ** Archaologische Zeitung," 
xHii, taf. II. The scene represents a riding- 
lesson, the old man at the right being the master. 
A young man rides along leading a second horse 
upon which his comrade is about to leap by the 
use of a vaulting-pole. For the sake of symmetry 
in the picture the artist may have placed this 
person in front of the horse instead of at the side, 
where he would naturally stand in taking such a 
leap; or it may be thought that he is merely 
balancing himself, ready to spring on as soon as 
the horse reaches him. When a cavalryman 
mounted by means of his spear, he used only one 
hand for the spear (see note 41, p. 139). Livy 
speaks of the use of the spear in leaping suddenly 
from a horse (iv, 19, 4). On the other half of this 
vase, not shown in my reproduction, a boy is lead- 
ing a horse, while the teacher looks on under a 
tree, showing that this lesson was given in the 
open air. The riding-master Pheidon, mentioned 
in Mnesimachus's comedy of the " Horse-breeder," 
a work of the first half of the fourth century, gave 
his lessons in the agora, near the Hermae (see 
Athenaeus, 402 f.) . But in another vase-painting 
(Daremberg et Saglio, ii, fig. 2717), young riders 
are exercising under cover. It is, therefore, 
impossible to say whether the hnracrCa mentioned 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 69 

by Xenophon at the end of his seventh chapter 
was in or out of doors. I have translated it 
riding-ground. In a different work (Memorabilia, 
iiij 3> 6), Xenophon calls the place afifxa^ (the 
Latin /larena), showing that horses were exercised 
upon sand, not hard ground. The object hanging 
at the left of our picture is an oil-flask, perhaps 
the a7'ybaUos (see below), used in the baths and 
wrestling- schools. The inscription has nothing to 
do with the actual scene, but is an example of the 
custom whereby the ancient vase-painter dedi- 
cated, as it were, his work to some friend ; to the 
name was generally attached the adjective KaA^? 
(handsome), as here. On the attachment of the 
horse's bit, see p. 146. 

Page 22. A proto-Corinthian lecythos, of the 
shape sometimes called the aryballos, perhaps of 
the early sixth century. Athletes used such vases 
to hold their oil (see above). From " Die 
Griechischen Vasen.'* Lau, taf. iv, 2. The small 
size of the rider, compared to his horse, is note- 
worthy (see p. 95) ; observe also the thick, long 
mane (p. 94). 

Page 23. From a vase found at Nola, in 
Campania J reproduced from Panofka's " Bilder 
Antiker Lebens," i, 5. A riding-master (see 
p. 168) is helping a boy to mount. In Plato, 
Laches, 182 a., riding is mentioned along with 
gymnastics as proper parts of the education of the 



170 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Athenian gentleman. In another place he says : 
" We must mount our children on horses in their 
earliest youth and take them on horseback to see 
war, in order that they may learn to ride; the 
horses must not be spirited and warlike, but the 
most tractable and yet the swiftest that can be 
had. In this way they will get an excellent view 
of what is hereafter to be their business ; and if 
there is danger they have only to follow their elder 
leaders and escape" (Republic, 467 e, Jowett's 
translation). This heroic treatment, it must be 
remembered, is Plato's proposal for the ideal state, 
and it does not prove that boys were ever actually 
taken to see battles by the Athenians. The great 
physician Galen, of the second century a. d., 
advised that boys should begin to learn to ride at 
the age of seven (De val. tuend. i, 8; ii, 9). 
Such a boy seems to be represented in our picture. 
But probably in ancient Athens boys began to ride 
between the ages of fourteen and eighteen, which 
were the years especially devoted to training in 
gjTunastics. At eighteen they were eligible for 
the cavalry, and began to learn to use weapons 
on horseback. This picture well illustrates the 
method of attaching the bit to the bridle (see 
p. 146). 

Page 26. A coin of King Alexander of Mace- 
don, 498-454 B. c, now in Berhn. From 
Baumeister, p. 950. Note the large size of the 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. I/I 

horse compared to the man (p. 98), his forelock 
(p. 32), and hogged mane (p. 91 fF.). I have 
already remarked on the extremely large branches 
of the bit (p. 148). The rider (a Macedonian 
of course) wears the short cloak adopted by the 
Athenian cavalry (p. 163), and the hat called 
causia, differing somewhat from the Athenian 
petasus (see p. 163). He carries two spears 
(p. 162). 

Page 27. Painting on a black- figured vase in 
the British Museum, from Gerhard's " Auserlesene 
Vasenbilder," iv, 247. This is a Panathenaic 
vase, intended as a prize for the winner at the 
Panathenaic festival, probably at some time in the 
fourth century. This side of the vase shows 
the kind of contest for which the prize was given ; 
on the other is the conventional figure of Athene. 
The rider in this case is not the owner, but a 
jockey. The owner's name is proclaimed by the 
man walking ahead, in the words AYNEIKETY : 
HIII02 : NIKAI, that is, " the horse of Dysnicetus 
is the winner." Behind walks a man carrying the 
prize, a tripod, on his head. In his left hand he 
holds a chaplet of victory; this, to my regret, is 
not shown in the present reproduction. 

Page 29. A silver coin of Maronea in Thrace, 
400-350 B. c. From Head's "Catalogue of the 
Greek Coins in the British Museum," Thrace, 
p. 126. This coin shows the leading-rein (note 



1/2 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

38, p. 138). The inscription indicates the name 
of the town. 

Page 30. From a black-figured amphora in 
the Hermitage collection, St. Petersburg, illustrated 
(in outline merely) in the " Comte Rendu de la 
Commission Imp^riale Arch^ologique," 1864, p. 5, 
from which I take it. The horse is bending his 
knees to allow the Amazon to mount (see p. 138). 
The inscription above has not been deciphered. 

Page 33. From Koepp's "Ueber das Bildnis 
Alexanders des Grossen," p. 3. A gold medallion 
from Tarsus, of the time of the Emperor Com- 
modus, in the " Cabinet des m^dailles," the 
obverse of which bears a fine head of Alexander 
the Great. The reverse, in our picture, shows the 
king hunting a lion. Professor Emerson has sug- 
gested (in the " American Journal of Archaeology," 
1887, p. 253) that for this medallion was selected 
the central figures in a bronze group, called the 
Lion Hunt, by Lysippus, dedicated at Delphi by 
Cratems (Plutarch, Alexander, 40). In this group 
were included hunting-dogs and Craterus himself 
coming up to help. The picture shows the flaps 
at the shoulders and about the loins, mentioned by 
Xenophon in his description of the cuirass (p. 66). 
A leopard's skin serves instead of a cloth (notes 
42, p. 140, and 66, p. 153). The inscription 
means " King Alexander." 

Page 34. From Panofka's "Bilder Antiker 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 73 

Lebens," iii, 7 (also in colours, a red-figured 
vase, in Gerhard's " Auserlesene Vasenbilder," 
iv, 272). The original, found at Vulci, Italy, is 
in the Royal Museum of Berlin. The picture 
shows the muzzle, the use of which is recom- 
mended by Xenophon whenever a horse is to be 
led (p. 31). The young man seems to be trying 
to avoid the difficulties in leading horses which 
Xenophon mentions (p. 35). He wears the regu- 
lar cavalry boots (pp. 67 and 163). To the word 
ETPA^ISEN, painted in the inscription, is prefixed 
(on the other side of the vase) the painter's name, 
Epictetus. On the word KAA02, see p. 169. 
Another picture, showing the muzzle in more 
detail, will be found in the " Jahrbuch des 
deutschen Arch. Instituts," 1889, taf. 10. 

Page 38. A painting on a red-figured vase, 
somewhat broken, found at Orvieto, now in the 
Museo Egizio ed Etrusco, Florence; from the 
« Drittes Hallisches Winckelmannsprogramm," 
1879, taf. iii, 2. The moon goddess, Selene, 
seated on a bridleless horse which is grazing or 
drinking. This goddess was first represented on 
horseback, so far as we know, by Phidias on the 
pedestal of the statue of Olympian Zeus (Pau- 
sanias, v, 11, 8). Other female divinities thus 
appearing in ancient art are Artemis, Aurora, and 
the Roman goddess of horses, Epona. But 
examples of mortal women on horseback are per- 



174 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

haps wanting in the art of Greece proper ; not so 
in that of Asia (see for example the Hereon of 
Gjolbaschi, a work of the fifth century b. c, and 
Daremberg et SagUo, ii, p. 751). The Amazons, 
to be sure, are frequently found on horseback, 
riding like men ; other females, whether goddesses 
or women, are represented as women ride to-day, 
except that, so far as I know, they are seated, not 
to the left, but to the right of the horse, as in our 
picture. 

Page 39. Painting on a vase in the Berlin 
Museum, found probably at Nola ; from the illus- 
tration in the " Archaologische Zeitung," 1878, taf. 
22, where it is described by C. Robert. In this 
picture a young horseman (on his costume see 
p. 163) is making his horse throw forward the off 
forefoot so as to assume the position described by 
the verb vro/Si/id^ea-daL (see p. 38 and note 37, 
p. 137). The motive of this picture and all the 
attitudes so closely resemble a group on the west 
side of the Parthenon frieze that Robert does not 
hesitate to say that the vase must have been 
painted in Athens, and that it is one of the rare 
Instances of a vase-painting copied from work in 
stone. But Brunn, in an article in the same peri- 
odical (1880, p. 18) finds a similar motive in 
other works ; for instance, in the coin of Larissa 
(see p. 54 of this book) and in a Roman relief 
(mentioned on p. 138). He concludes that this 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1/5 

was a typical position seen in every riding-school, 
and hence that there is no proof that our picture 
was painted in Athens or copied from the Parthe- 
non. Note the method of attachment of the bit 
(p. 146), and the leading-rein, distinguished from 
the bridle-rein (p. 163). On the fetlocks, see 
note 6, p. 122. 

Page 44. A statuette found in the excavations 
at Dodona, the ancient seat of the worship of 
Zeus. It is of the most archaic style of work 
found there, and may belong to the seventh 
century b. c. I take the picture from " Dodone 
et ses mines," Carapanos, pi. 13, i, described in 
vol. i, p. 183. The mane of the horse is very thick 
and long (see p. 91) ; the forelock is arranged 
in a sort of tuft, as in Assyrian rehefs (see for 
example the plate facing p. 145). A similar 
arrangement, though not found, I believe, in works 
of the fifth and early fourth century, appears again 
in later art ; see the frontispiece of this book, and 
the cuts on pp. 13 and 51. On the bridle, see 
p. 146. The peculiar shape of the rein (I mean 
the swallow-tailed look at the middle) is found in 
some Assyrian reliefs ; and on the whole this stat- 
uette bears many resemblances to those works. 

Page 45. From "Peintures de Vases Antiques 
recueilles par Millin et Millingen : publics et com- 
mentees par S. Reinach," pi. i, 45. A vase in the 
Malmaison collection in the Louvre, found in 



176 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Southern Italy. The scene represents a contest 
at the Panathenaic festival. This contest is re- 
ferred to in an Attic inscription of the first part 
of the fourth century (C. I. A., ii, 965). A shield 
was set up, and at it riders hurled the javelin while 
passing at full gallop. In our picture the first 
rider has already thrown his javelin, which has 
broken against the shield and lies on the ground ; 
the rider is soothing his horse by the means 
employed also on the Parthenon frieze (see the 
end of note 46, p. 143). The second rider is 
about to hurl his javelin, and the winged figures 
above with crown and fillets indicate that he is to 
be the winner. This game originated at Argos, 
at the festival of Hera ; and the shield went to the 
winner (Pindar, 01. 7, 83 ; Nem. 10, 22 ; Hyginus, 
170, 273). On the bits, see p. 146. 

Page 50. A bit found on the Acropolis of 
Athens, fully described in note 53, p. 145. 

Page 51. Bronze statuette found at Hercula- 
neum in 1761. From an engraving in Duniy's 
" Histoire des Grecs," iii, p. 233, where it is taken 
from a photograph. It is also given, in outline, in 
the Museo Borbonico, iii, tav. 27. Now in the 
Naples Museum. Save in the mane and tail, this 
horse corresponds closely to the description of 
Simon (p. 107 ff.). 

Page 54. A silver coin of Larissa, in Thessaly ; 
from the " Monatsberichte der Koniglichen Preus- 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 177 

sischen Akad. der Wiss.," 1878, laf. 2, 30. Of 
the motive, as Bninn understands it, I have spoken 
already (p. 1 74) . On the costume of the man, see 
p. 163. The inscription gives the name of the place. 
Page 55. From an engraving in " SchUemann's 
Excavations," Schuchhardt, translated by Sellers^ 
p. 132. A fragment of a vase found in the exca- 
vations at Tiryns, and perhaps of the ninth or 
tenth century b. c. The animals and the men all 
have a wooden look ; but in spite of the stiff legs, 
flat belly, huge eyes, and flame-like mane of the 
horse, yet the shape of the head and neck of 
the horse show that even in this, the most archaic 
of the pictures in this book, the artist had before 
his mind the type of animal which we see in the 
best art (see p. 90) . The lines above the horse's- 
back are not intended for reins, but are part of the 
geometrical ornamentation. The men carry each 
a shield and a spear, and probably wore the skin 
of some animal of which the tail appears dangling 
down below. The colouring of this vase is a 
lustrous brown on a light yellow ground. 
Page 60. A bit, fully described on p. 147. 
Page 61. From Schoene's "Griechische Re- 
liefs," taf. 17. Part of the fragment of a relief 
found in Attica, now in the Pmakothek, Munich. 
The lower part, here omitted, contains an olive 
crown, showing that the relief was set up by a 
victor in a tmrtxos dywv or TroftTn}, an equestrian 

12 



178 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

contest or a parade ; perhaps he was a hipparch 
or phylarch (see p. 75). I have chosen this relief 
because it seems to illustrate Xenophon's words 
•on the proper way to lead a troop of cavalry, if 
you wish to make the whole line "a sight well 
worth seeing" (p. 64). 

Page 64. A silver coin of Ichnae, in Macedo- 
nia, 500-480 B.C. From the "Catalogue of the 
Greek Coins in the British Museum," Macedonia, 
p. 76. Note the hogged mane of the horse 
(p. 94) and the rider's greaves (note 6^, p. 153). 
The inscription gives the name of the town. 

Page 65. An Attic black-figured vase of the 
fifth century; from Gerhard's "Vases Etrusques 
et Campaniens du Mus. Roy. de Berlin," pi. xii. 
The horsemen wear greaves (note 63, p. 153), and 
each carries two spears (p. 162) ; the helmet may 
be the type called Boeotian (note 61, p. 152). 
The inscriptions at the left and at the right show 
that the two men are the Attic heroes, Acamas 
and Demophon, sons of Theseus and Phaedra. 
Homer does not mention them ; but according to 
later stories current among the Athenians, they 
went to the Trojan war, and Vergil puts Acamas 
among the heroes in the Trojan horse. They 
appear several times in vase-paintings ; and there 
were bronze equestrian statues of them on the 
Acropolis, as well as a painting of them by Polyg- 
notus at Delphi. The names of their horses are 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 179 

given in our picture, — Phalius, of the horse at the 
left, and Calliphora, of that at the right. The 
first, which was also the name of the charger of 
Belisarius (Procopius, B. G. i, i8), means that the 
animal had a white star on his forehead; the 
second means " handsome legged." The perpen- 
dicular inscription between the two animals is a 
dedication (see p. 169) of the vase to the hand- 
some Onetorides. 

Page 69. Bronze statuette of Alexander on 
Bucephalas in the Naples Museum, found at Her- 
culaneum; from the outline engravmg in the 
« Museo Borbonico," iii, 43. Ever since its dis- 
covery in 1 761, it has been supposed to be a 
reduced copy from the bronze group by Lysippus, 
made at Alexander's own order, to represent an 
incident at the battle on the Granicus in 334 b. c. 
In this battle the king's helmet was broken by a 
blow from a sword (Plutarch, Alex. 17) ; hence 
he is here represented bare-headed. The entire 
group, consisting of many figures, was carried to 
Rome by Metellus (Veil. Pat. i, 11, 3). This 
horse closely resembles the other (p. 51) found at 
the same time and place. On the broad brow, see 
note 12, p. 125 ; on the cloth, note 42, p. 140; 
on the bit, p. 149 ; on the breastplate, p. 67 ; on 
the flaps at Alexander's shoulders and loins, p. 66, 
Page 106. From an engraving in "Antiquitds 
de Bosphore Cimm^rien," Reinach, pi. xx. A 



l80 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

repousse gold ornament, here represented a little 
more than half the size of the original, found in 
Koul-Oba in the Crimea, now in St. Petersburg. 
The scene represents a Scythian horseman hunting 
a hare. On the bit, see p. 146. 

Page 107. From "Monuments Grecs pubHes 
par I'association pour 1' encouragement des etudes 
Grecques en France," Nos. 14-16, pi. 5, with a 
long description. The vase, found at Vulci in 
Etruria, is now in the Louvre, and was made in 
Athens, probably about 450 b. c. Our picture, 
which is painted on the inside of the cup, repre- 
sents a young cavalryman with curled hair, 
through which is passed a red fillet. He wears a 
long mantle, richly made and of some rather stiff 
material, instead of the usual short cloak (pp. 163, 
171); his petasiis (p. 1 63) is hanging at his back by 
a cord which passes round his neck ; another cord 
hanging on his shoulder served to keep the hat in 
place when it was worn on the head. His boots 
are of the usual cavalry pattern (p. 163), and he 
carries two javelins (p. 162). The horse is decid- 
edly ugly ; he is too thin and bony, and his head 
is too long and narrow at the sides to satisfy a 
Greek connoisseur. Yet the artist has not done 
badly with the details of the anatomy, the muscles 
of the back and hind quarters, the folds where the 
fore legs are set on, and with the tail. The bridle 
is merely indicated, but we can see how the bit 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. l8r 

was attached (p. 146). The pose of horse and 
man being one of complete repose, it may be 
thought that we have here an outpost, doing guard 
duty, — perhaps in winter, as this might account for 
the heavy cloak. A good Hst of vase-paintings of 
men on horseback Avill be found in the article 
from which I have taken the above description. 

Page 119. From Engelmann and Anderson's 
" Pictorial Atlas to Homer," plate xiv, 74. From 
a Panathenaic vase (see p. 171) of the sixth cen- 
tuiy B. c, found at Camirus in Rhodes. It is 
better illustrated in Salzmann's ''Ndcropole de 
Camiros," pi. 57, as black-figured on an orange 
ground. The scene represents acrobats perform- 
ing, and I take the following description from the 
first book named above : " Two horses are in full 
gallop in the ring, guided by a single rider, who 
looks round at an acrobat, who, with the aid of a 
spring-board, has leaped on the back of his horse, 
and, with two shields, is performing a martial 
dance, jumping from one to the other. He is 
represented as very small on account of the lack 
of space. Below, between the horses' legs, is 
another figure (also made small and placed in this 
strange position for want of space) who is busily 
engaged in smoothing the sand of the ring with a 
pick, just as the grooms do with a rake in the 
modem circus. Behind the horses is a man play- 
ing on a double flute in front of the spectators. 



1 82 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

who are seated on tiers of benches to the left. 
They are applauding loudly, and one of them 
shouts, ' Bravo, fine tumblmg ! ' (koXcos rot 
KvfBicrruToi) . On the right a youth is seen climb- 
ing up a pole (with a slanting support at one 
side) ; but whether this is another performance or 
part of the jockey's display, it is impossible to 
determine." 

Although we have no evidence of riding in the 
Heroic age, as I have remarked above (p. 74 and 
note 71, p. 154), yet at the time when the 
Homeric poems were composed, riding had 
reached such a stage of progress that even acro- 
batic performances on horseback were not un- 
known. One of the Homeric similes to which I 
referred in the note just mentioned runs as follows : 
" As when a man that well knows how to ride, har- 
nesses up four chosen horses, and, springing from 
the ground, dashes to the great city along the 
public highway ; and crowds of men and women 
look on in wonder ; while he with all confidence, 
as his steeds fly on, keeps leaping from one to 
another" (Iliad, xv, 679 ff.). Scenes like the 
one portrayed in our picture were probably 
familiar to the writer of those verses. This per- 
formance seems to be taking place in a regular 
circus. What has been called a "spring-board" 
in the description above quoted seems to me to be 
almost exactly like one of those hollow wooden 



ON THE ILLUSTRATIONS. 1 83 

pedestals on which the helpers m the modem 
circus stand when they hold out the paper hoops 
through which the rider is to jump. Of an event 
in which highly trained horses bore a part an 
amusing story is told. The luxurious people of 
Sybaris in Southern Italy had trained their horses 
to dance to the music of the flute. Their invet- 
erate enemies, the people of Croton, took advan- 
tage of this, and having substituted flutes instead 
of the usual trumpets in their army, suddenly 
struck up a dancing tune just as a battle was 
beginning. Thereupon the horses of the Sybarites 
instantly threw off their riders, and began to skip 
and dance, and the men of Croton won the battle 
(Aelian, N. A., xvi, 23). If there is any truth in 
this story, it shows either that the Greeks of 
Magna Graecia used cavahy earlier than the 
people of Greece proper (for Sybaris was de- 
stroyed by Croton in 510 b. c, and we have seen 
that the Athenians had no cavalry before the 
Persian wars), or else that the event described 
took place after the return of the Sybarites to the 
site of their old city, about 450 b. c. 

Page 157. A silver coin of Potidaea, of about 
500 B. c, from the " Catalogue of Coins in the 
British Museum," Macedonia, p. 99. The rider is 
Poseidon Hippios, the sea-god here appearing as 
patron of horses, which, according to the myth, he 
created. On the size of the horse see p. 98. 



1 84 XENOPHON ON HORSEMANSHIP. 

Page 159. From an amphora illustrated and 
described in the " Achtes Hallisches Winck- 
elmannsprogramm," 1883. The vase is of the 
middle of the third century b. c, was found at 
Ruvi in Apulia, and is now in the Naples Museum. 
I have taken from it only the figure of a Greek 
warrior; in the rest of the picture an Eastern 
king is escaping from him at full speed in a 
chariot. It is thought that the painting, without 
referring to any actual historical scene, symbolizes 
the triumph of Alexander, as representing Greek 
civilization, over Darius, as the representative of 
the East. 

Tailpiece. A silver coin of King Pausanias of 
Macedon, 390-389 b. c, from the " Catalogue 
of Greek Coins in the British Museum," Macedo- 
nia, p. 169. I have spoken above (note 72, p. 
155) of the letter Koppa branded upon horses of 
extraordinary value. On the hindquarter of this 
horse is branded a caduceus, or staff of Hermes. 
Other brands are mentioned in Daremberg et 
Saglio, ii, p. 800. The inscription on this coin 
gives the king's name. 




INDEX. 



Achilles, horses of, 99, 156. 
Acrobats, 181 ff. 
Action of the horse, 55, 59, 117. 
Age of horses, 17, 23, 127. 
Alexander the Great, loi ff. ; in 

art, 172, 179, 1 84. 
Amble, the, 141. 
Apelles, 84, 106. 
Apsyrtus on the horse, 86, 115. 
Arm, piece of armour called the, 

66, 152. 
Armour for the horse, 67^ 153 ; 

for the rider, 65 ff., 67 ff. 
Assurbanipal, portrait of, 166. 



Back, double, 17, 112, 113, 114, 

115, 125. 
Back smew, 16, 109, 123. 
Bareback riding, 41. 
Barley surfeit, 28, 128. 
Barrd, the, 88, iii, 114, xi6. 
Bars, the, 124. 
Bit, the, 36, 53, 138, 144 ff.; 

branches of the, 148, 161, 171 ; 

flexible, 57, 58 ; in art, i6o, 

163, 167, 170, 175, 179; rough, 

57, 144 ff.; smooth, 56, 144 ff. ; 

stiff, 57, 58, 149. 
Bits, kinds of, 56, 144 ff. 
Boots, for the rider, 67, 154 ; in 

art, 163, i6c, 173, 180. 
Branches of the bit, 148 ; in art, 

161, 171. 
Brands on horses, 72 ; in art, 184. 
Breaking, 20. 
Breastplate, for the horse, 67 ; 

in art, 179. 



Breeds of horses, 78. 

Bridle. See Bit. 

Bridling, 35. 

Brood mares, 32, 117, 135. 

Bucephalas, 78, loi ff., 125 ; in 

art, 170. 
Bucephalus type, loi, 125 ; in 

art, 160, 165, 179. 

Calpurnius on the horse, 86, 

112. 
Career, the, 43, 79. 
Causia^ in art, 171. 
Cavalry, Athenian, 20, 75 f. ; in 

art, 162 ; dress of, in art, 103 ; 

examination for, 76, 173. 
Cheek-piece, 146. 
Chest of the horse, 16, 109, iii, 

113, 114,115. 
Chma eye, 102. 
Chin-strap, 39, 136. 
Chirrup, 5^, 144. 
Chlamys, m art, 163, 180. 
Cloth, the, 41, 67, 140, 154; in 

art, 172, 179. 
Cluck, 55, 144. 
Colour of the horse, 108, 112, 

117. 
Columella on the horse, 86, 112. 
Coronet, the, 113, 116. 
Cropping, 134. 
Cuirass, 65, 150 ; in art, 165. 
Curb, 80, 144. 
Curry-comb, 133. 

Demi-pesade, 79, 126, 150. 
Dexileus, monument of, 166. 
Discs on tlie bit, 56, 145. 



1 86 



INDEX. 



Diseases of the horse, aS. 
Dismounting, 44, i6!i. 
Docking, 134. 

£oK(./oiaoria, 76 ; in art, 163 f« 
Driving, 74. 

Ears of the horse, 17, 109, iii, 
112, 114, ri5, 117, 125. 

Echini on the bit, 56, X45. 

€xi»'Of, 145. 

Eleusinion, 13, 120. 

Examination tor the cavalry, 75 ; 
in art, 163 ff. 

Eyes of the horse, 17, 109, iii, 
112, 115, 117; china, 102. 

Feed, 128. 

Feet of the horse, 14, 28, 116. 

Fetlocks, 15, 109, 122; in art, 

175- 
Flaps on the cuirass, 66, 151 ; 

in art, 167, 172, 179. 
Forearms, 16, 115, 124. 
Forelock, 32, 113; in art, 164, 

i7i» 175 
Frog, the, 15, 29, 34, 115, 122. 
Frontlet, 67. 

Oaits of the horse, 42, 59, 63, 
79. 97i 141 ; in art, 141, 163, 
164. 

Gallop, the, 141. 

Geldings, 98. 

Girth, 140. 

yvuifxove^, 120. 

Greaves, 66, 153 ; in art, 178. 

Grooming, 31, 34, 1 33- 

Halter, 30, 31, 39. 

Hands, the, 42, 53, 56. 

Head of the horse, 32, 109, in, 

112, 113,115, 117, 124. 
Headpiece, 36, 136. 
Headstall, 36, 136. 

Helmet, the, 66, 152; in art, 

165, 178. 
Hipparch, 75, 164, 178. 
Hogging, 93. 
Hoofs, 15, 28, 108, III, 112, 

113, 114, 115, n6, 117. 



Horace on the horse, 120. 

Horse, armour not Greek, 153 ; 
an expensive animal, 76 tf. ; 
in art. Si ff., 158 ff. ;• high- 
mettled, the, 52 ; introduction 
in Greece, ip5 ; nature of the, 
98 ; pnmarily used for war, 
100 ; tj'pe of, how determined, 
90 ; writers on the, 86 flf. See 
also Breaking, Colour, Gaits, 
Head, Hoofs, Mane, Points, 
Size, etc. 

Korse-niising, jS. 

Horse-shoes, 121. 

Horses, dancing, 183. 

Hunting, 48, 143. 

V7rd/3a(n;, 1 26. 
vjTO/Bt^a^OMat, I37, 1 74. 

Javklin game, 176. 

javeiins, 48, 6S ; in art, 161, 164. 

Jaws of the horse, 17, 109. 

Knees of the horse, 16, iii, 

Koppa horse, 155, 184, 

Leading-rein, 35, 136, 138; 

in art, 163, 171, 173. i75- 
r^eads, the, 42, 140. 
Leaping, 46. 
Loin of the horse, 17, 61, no, 

150. 

Mane, the, 32, 47, 8t, 91 ff., 
108, III, 112, 113, 114, 115, 
"7, 135. 156; in art, 164, 
169, 170, 175, 17S. 

Mares. See Brood mares. 

Markers, 23, 126. 

Marks in the teeth, 127. 

Mash, 128. 

Micon, 85. 

Milk-teeth, 126. 

Mounting, ^y, 38, 39 f., 52, 104, 
136, 137,139; in art, 168, 172, 

174. 
Mounting-blocks, 139. 
Mouth of the horse, 29. 
Muzzle, 31, 131 ; in art, 173. 



INDEX. 



187 



Names of horses, 179. 

Nature of the horse, gS. 

Neck of the horse, 16, 109, 112, 

114, 115, 117. 
Neck-piece, 65, 151 : in art, 167. 
Nemesian on the horse, 86, 114. 
Nicking, 134. 

Nose-band, 39, 136, 139. 
Nostrils, 17, 109, III, 112, 113, 

115, 117, 124. 

OKA.a^cic, 138, 172. 

Oppian on the horse, 86, 113. 

Pace, the, 141. 

Palladius on the horse, 87, 116. 

Parthenon horses, 79, S3, 8g, 94, 

95. 97, 13S, 143, 149, i5i» 160, 

165. 
Pasterns, 109, 114. 
Pauson, 84. 
irefiij, 127. 
Pelagonius, 86, 115. 

■nepovrif 122. 

Petasus, 163, 171, 180. 

Phidias, 83. 

Phylarch,'75 ; in art, 164, 178. 

Pliny on the horse, 89. 

Points of the horse, 80 ff., S7, 

107 ff. 
Poise, the, 24. 
Poll, the, 16, 17, 109. 
Pollux on the horse, 91, 156. 
Prices of horses, 76, 102. 

Quarters, the, i8. 

Racing, 75, 171. 

Rearing, 61, 63. 

Reins, 42, 161. 

Riding, 74 ff. ; acrobatic, 181 ff. ; 
age for learning, 170 ; not in 
Heroic age, 74, 154, 182 ; in 
Homer, 74, 182 ; later than 
driving, 74 ; never for pleas- 
ure, 100. 

Riding-boots. See Boots. 

Riding-masters, 79, x68, 169. 

Riding-school, 168. 

Rings on the bit, 57, 149. 



Sabre, 67. 

Saddle, 80, 140. See Cloth. 

Sclilieben on the horse, 80, 81, 
87,91. 

Scythian bowmen, 164. 

Seat, the, 40, 48. 

Selene, horse of, 165 ; on horse- 
back, 173. 

Shanks, the, 15, 18, 109, iii, 
113, 115, 126. 

Shoes, 121. 

Shying, 37. 

Simon, 13, 15, 62, 79, 85, 86, 
107, 119, 176. 

Size of the horse, 18, 95, 126, 
i39> ^69, 170, 183. 

Snaffle, twisted, 146. 

Solca, 121. 

Spear, 68. 

Spurs, 46, 142. 

Stable, 27, 128. 

Stall, the, 28, 128. 

Stallions, 98, 116. 

Stirrups, 80, 137. 

Stonehenge on the horse, 89. 

Stones in stalls, 28, 128. 

Sword, 154. 



Tail of the horse, 32, 110, 113, 

114, 115, 116, 117. 
Teeth of the horse, 109, no, 

126. 



Tpoxoi, 145. 
Trot, the, 141. 



Varro on the horse, 86, 11 1. 
Veins in the horse, in. 
Vergil on the horse, 86, in. 
Volte, the, 24,43, 79, 127. 



Walk, the, 141. 
Washing, 32, 33. 
Withers, the, 17, no, in. 
Women riding, 173. 



Xenophon, his life, 70 ff. 



